Adult

Portia Kane is having a meltdown. After escaping her ritzy Florida life and her cheating pornographer husband, she finds herself back in South Jersey, a place that remains largely unchanged from the years of her unhappy youth. Lost and alone, looking to find the goodness in the world she believes still exists, Portia sets off to save herself by saving someone else --- a beloved high school English teacher who has retired after a traumatic incident.

FBI agent Joe Grant and a confidential informant are killed in a deadly shootout. The official report places blame for the deaths on Joe's shoulders, but the story just doesn't add up, and Joe’s wife, Mary, has too many troubling questions that need answers. Stonewalled by the FBI, Mary will be drawn into a deadly conspiracy that puts her in the crosshairs of the richest and most powerful men in America…and the newest and most terrifying surveillance system known to man.

Hundreds of pleasure-seekers board The Beautiful Dreamer cruise ship for relaxation and fun in the Caribbean. For three sun-filled days, the journey seems to deliver all that the brochure promised. Until Day Four. Without warning, the ship stops dead. Electricity and communications are cut off. Smoke pours out of the engine room. The passengers and crew have no way to call for help and are stranded in the Gulf of Mexico. At first, all aboard are certain that rescue teams will come looking for them soon. All they have to do is wait. Supplies soon run low, the toilets stop working and a virus plagues the ship, but when the body of a woman is discovered in her cabin, irritation escalates to panic. There's a murderer on board The Beautiful Dreamer...and maybe something worse.

Stephanie Adams is a devoted stay-at-home mother who has stayed in a dead marriage for years for the sake of her children. Then, on a ski trip, her husband dies suddenly and all bets are off. Despite her children’s grief, and her own conflicting emotions and loneliness, Stephanie tries to move on, but struggles to find herself as an independent individual after years of giving up her life for everyone else. A spur-of-the-moment road trip leads her to the Grand Canyon and a chance meeting --- and her whole life changes forever.

It’s the eve of Rachel Chu’s wedding, and she should be over the moon. She has a flawless Asscher-cut diamond, a wedding dress she loves, and a fiancé willing to thwart his meddling relatives and give up one of the biggest fortunes in Asia in order to marry her. Still, Rachel mourns the fact that her birthfather, a man she never knew, won’t be there to walk her down the aisle. Then a chance accident reveals his identity. Suddenly, Rachel is drawn into a dizzying world of Shanghai splendor, a world where people attend church in a penthouse, where exotic cars race down the boulevard, and where people aren’t just crazy rich...they’re China rich.

The stories in CHARLIE MARTZ AND OTHER STORIES, produced early in Elmore Leonard’s career, reveal a writer in transition. Here, he explores new voices and locations --- from the bars of small-town New Mexico and Michigan to a film set in Hollywood, a hotel in Southern Spain, even a military base in Kuala Lumpur. They also introduce us to classic Leonard characters, some of whom recur throughout the collection, such as aging lawman Charlie Martz and weary former matador Eladio Montoya.

DI Zoe Dolan is tracking the Creeper, a stalker who's been breaking into women's homes and attacking them. Meanwhile, Jane Webster gets a call to the helpline where she volunteers. The soft voice at the end of the line says he loves these women, but it's a love that ends in blood. When Jane tells the police, it should be the lead that Zoe needs --- but it only pulls her further into a case that is already taking her dangerously close to the past she's never fully escaped.

Brett had been in love with Charlie from the day she laid eyes on him in college. When Charlie is found murdered, Brett is devastated. But if she is honest with herself, their marriage had been hanging by a thread for quite some time. Though all clues point to Charlie’s brother Eli, who’s been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years, any number of people might have been driven to slit the throat of Charlie Moss --- a handsome, charismatic man who unwittingly damaged almost every life he touched. Brett is determined to understand how such a tragedy could have happened --- and if she was somehow complicit.

Christian Grey exercises control in all things; his world is neat, disciplined and utterly empty --- until the day that Anastasia Steele falls into his office, in a tangle of shapely limbs and tumbling brown hair. He tries to forget her, but instead is swept up in a storm of emotion he cannot comprehend and cannot resist. Unlike any woman he has known before, shy, unworldly Ana seems to see right through Christian --- past the business prodigy and the penthouse lifestyle to his cold, wounded heart. Will being with Ana dispel the horrors of his childhood that haunt him every night?

When investigative reporter Jay “Dance” Danziger is nearly killed in a bomb blast, journalist Jordanna Winters senses a career-making story. Together they can find out who’s responsible. But as their investigation uncovers a string of unsolved murders, each body branded in the same way, Jordanna realizes that Dance isn’t the only one in danger. Deep in Jordanna’s troubled past is the key to a killer’s terrifying mission. And her turn is coming, as he prepares to make his mark once more.