Adult

"Edward Hopper is surely the greatest American narrative painter. His work bears special resonance for writers and readers, and yet his paintings never tell a story so much as they invite viewers to find for themselves the untold stories within." So says Lawrence Block, who has invited 17 writers to join him in an unprecedented anthology of brand-new stories. Contributors include Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Olen Butler, Michael Connelly, Megan Abbott, Joe R. Lansdale, Jonathan Santlofer, Jeffery Deaver and Lee Child.

A young woman is found beheaded in the Stockholm home of business tycoon Jesper Orre. Investigator Peter Lindgren and psychological profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Schön are put on the case. Side-stepping their own dangerous relationship, Peter and Hanne find they can’t yet identify the woman --- and Orre is missing. In a separate thread, two months earlier, Emma Bohman, a timid beauty with a dark past, works in Orre’s company. A chance encounter between them leads to a love affair. Orre insists their relationship stay a secret, then leaves her without explanation --- and frightening things begin to happen to Emma. Why does Orre want to hurt her? And how far would he go to silence his secret lover?

In the spring of 1944, Ernest Hemingway traveled to London and then to France to cover World War II for Colliers magazine. Obviously he was a little late in arriving. Why did he go? He had resisted this kind of journalism for much of the early period of the war, but when he finally decided to go, he threw himself into the thick of events and so became a conduit to understanding some of the major events and characters of the war. HEMINGWAY AT WAR is also an investigation into Hemingway’s subsequent work --- much of it stemming from his wartime experience --- which shaped the latter stages of his career in dramatic fashion.

In the early 1920s, in the remote village of Ghamsar, teenagers Talla and Sardar fall in love and marry. Sardar brings his young bride with him across the mountains to the suburbs of Tehran, where the couple settles down and builds a home. From the outskirts of the capital city, they will watch as the Qajar dynasty falls and Reza Khan rises to power as Reza Shah Pahlavi. Into this family of illiterate shepherds is born Bahram, a boy whose brilliance and intellectual promise are apparent from a very young age. Through his education, Bahram will become a fervent follower of reformer Mohammad Mosaddegh and will participate first-hand in his country's political and social upheavals.

The French Revolution casts a long shadow, one that reaches into our own time and influences our debates on freedom, equality and authority. Its significance morphs according to the sympathies of the viewer, who may see it as a series of gory tableaux, a regrettable slide into uncontrolled anarchy --- or a radical reshaping of the political landscape. Ian Davidson provides a fresh look at this vital moment in European history. He reveals how it was an immensely complicated and multifaceted revolution, and how subsequently it became weighted with political, social and moral values.

January 1946: Two WACs leave an officers’ club in Munich, and four Soviet NKGB agents kidnap them at knifepoint in the parking lot and shove them in the back of an ambulance. That is the agents’ first mistake, and their last. One of the WACs, a blond woman improbably named Claudette Colbert, works for the new Directorate of Central Intelligence, and three of the men end up dead and the fourth wounded. The “incident,” however, will send shock waves rippling up and down the line and have major repercussions not only for her, but for her boss, James Cronley, Chief DCI-Europe, and for everybody involved in their still-evolving enterprise.

In the summer of 2002, Shannon Leone Fowler, a 28-year-old marine biologist, was backpacking with her fiancé and love of her life, Sean. But their trip took a tragic turn when a box jellyfish --- the most venomous animal in the world --- wrapped around Sean’s leg, stinging and killing him in a matter of minutes. Rejecting the Thai authorities’ attempt to label Sean’s death a “drunk drowning,” Shannon ferried his body home to his stunned family --- a family to which she suddenly no longer belonged. Her life paused indefinitely so that she could travel around the world to find healing. Travel had forged her relationship with Sean, and she hoped it could also aid in processing his death.

RUNNING follows the lives of three friends and lovers: queer English poet Milo Rollack, prep school dropout Jasper Lethe, and 17-year-old Bridey Sullivan, an American with a fascination for fire. Barely out of childhood, squatting in a crumbling hotel on the outskirts of Athens in the late 1980s, the three slip in and out of homelessness, heavy drinking and underground jobs. While working as runners for the hotel --- convincing tourists to stay there for a commission and free board --- they are befriended by an IRA fugitive and become inextricably linked to an act of terrorism that will mark each of them for life.

Patricia McConnell combines brilliant insights into canine behavior --- gained from her work with aggressive and fearful dogs --- with heartwarming stories of her own dogs and their life on the farm. Now, she reveals that it wasn’t just the dogs who had serious problems. For decades Dr. McConnell secretly grappled with her own guilt and fear, which were rooted in the harrowing traumas of her youth. Patricia is forced to face her past by her love for a young Border Collie named Will, whose frequent, unpredictable outbreaks of fear and fury shake Patricia to her core. In order to save Will from this dangerous behavior, she must find her own will to heal, and along the way learn that willpower by itself is not enough.