Adult

As Lt. Eve Dallas and her billionaire husband Roarke are driving home, a young woman suddenly stumbles out in front of their car. Daphne Strazza is rushed to the ER, but it’s too late for her husband, Dr. Anthony Strazza. A brilliant orthopedic surgeon, he now lies dead amid the wreckage of his obsessively organized town house, his three safes opened and emptied. Daphne would be a valuable witness, but the only description of the perp she can offer is repeatedly calling him “the devil.” While it emerges that Dr. Strazza was cold, controlling and widely disliked, this is one case where the evidence doesn’t point to the spouse. What does the devil look like? And where will he show up next?

On the family homestead by the sea where she grew up, Martha Mary saw ghosts. As a young woman, she hopes to distance herself from those spirits by escaping to an inland college town. There, she is absorbed by a budding romance, relieved by separation from an unstable sister, and disinterested in the flyers seeking information about a young woman who has disappeared --- until one Indian summer afternoon when the missing woman appears beneath Martha’s apartment window, wearing a down coat, her hair coated with ice.

This collection of essays features 12 “heroes” from the American West. Jack Schaefer profiles pioneers of the West --- the doctors, explorers and cowboys who settled the challenging landscape and built communities in the Old West. These unsung champions highlight the unglorified work of the West that was achieved without violence and gunslinging. Schaefer shares the lives of Grizzly Adams, George A. Ruston, John “Snowshoe” Thompson, John Phillips, Washakie, John S. Chisum, Thomas J. Smith, Valentine T. McGillycuddy, Charles Fox Gardiner and Elfego Baca.

The dynamic Río Grande has run through all the valley’s diverse cultures: Puebloan, Spanish, Mexican and Anglo. Photography arrived in the region at the beginning of the river’s great transformation by trade, industry and cultivation. In RIO, Melissa Savage has collected images that document the sweeping history of that transformation --- from those of 19th-century expeditionary photographer W. H. Jackson to the work of the great 20th-century chronicler of the river, Laura Gilpin. The photographs are assembled in thematic bundles --- river crossings, cultivation, trade, floods, the Mexican insurrection, the Big Bend region, and the estuary where the river at last meets the Gulf of Mexico.

Four years after a tragic mission decimated his team, Cole "Tox" Russell has been disavowed by the United States. But when a dormant, centuries-old disease is unleashed, he is lured back into action. Tox and his former Special Forces team regroup to work with FBI deception expert Kasey Cortes and fiery archaeologist Tzivia Khalon to search the globe for answers --- and a cure. As the mission leads from one continent to another, it becomes clear they're not just fighting a plague but battling an ancient secret society whose true goals remain hidden. Tox and his team soon realize that their sole chance might be to reach back through centuries of silence to find the only answer that can save them all.

When Old Order Amish Rose Kurtz is asked to leave her family and help Joel Dienner with his children in the wake of tragedy, the quiet young woman recognizes a home where she might find kindness instead of criticism and hope replacing harsh words. She agrees to stay in Forest Hill and become Joel’s wife for the sake of his family needs, but their marriage is to be a partnership, one built from need, not love and affection. As the years pass, Rose continues to beckon Joel to join life again, to take joy in his growing children, and to awaken his heart to the possibility of new love. But will the arrival of a beautiful widow and a series of misunderstandings reverse how far Rose and Joel have come?

Scholars have long argued that the developmental state of the human infant at birth is unique. COSTLY AND CUTE expands that argument, pointing out that many distinctively human characteristics can be traced to the fact that we give birth to infants who are highly dependent on others and who learn how to be human while their brains are experiencing growth unlike that seen in other primates. The contributors to this volume take a broad look at how human infants are similar to and different from the infants of other species, how our babies have constrained our evolution over the past six million years, and how they continue to shape the ways we live today.

In Old Gate, Virginia, stands a grand house built by Randolph Bliss, a charming New York carpetbagger who, in 1878, shook off dire warnings to build his home elsewhere. For the ground beneath Bliss House is tainted with the kind of tragedy that curses generations, seeping through the foundation and sowing madness in its wake. THE ABANDONED HEART is the prequel to CHARLOTTE'S STORY and BLISS HOUSE, forming a trilogy of southern Gothic novels in which one haunted house begets haunted lives that echo over centuries. A haunting so powerful that even Bliss House’s destruction cannot kill it.

THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT tells the mesmerizing story of Lilliet Berne, an orphan who left the American frontier for Europe and was swept into the glamour and terror of Second Empire France. She became a sensation of the Paris Opera, with every accolade but an original role --- her chance at immortality. When one is offered to her, she finds the libretto is based on her deepest secret, something only four people have ever known. But who betrayed her? Alexander Chee shares Lilliet’s cunning transformation from circus rider to courtesan to legendary soprano, retracing the path that led to the role that could secure her reputation --- or destroy her with the secrets it reveals.

Two years since losing her husband, all Andrea Montgomery wants is for her children to enjoy their first Christmas in Haven Point. But then Andie accepts a favor to keep an eye on the brother of her friend Wyn, Sheriff Marshall Bailey, who’s recovering from a hit-and-run. Marshall hates feeling defenseless and resents the protective impulses that Andie brings out in him. When a blizzard forces them together for the holidays, something in Marshall begins to thaw. Andie’s gentle nature is a salve, and her kids’ excitement for the holidays makes him forget why he never wanted a family. If only he and Andie can admit what they really want --- each other --- their Christmas wishes might come true after all.