Newly minted private investigator William Fletcher is having trouble finding clientele. His past as a former heavyweight contender with a few shady connections --- not to mention the color of his skin in race-obsessed New Orleans --- isn't helping lure clients to his door. Stuck without any viable alternative, he takes a case from an old criminal acquaintance, Storm. His only client assures him that the job is simple: locate his missing estranged daughter, Zella. But when Fletcher starts knocking on doors, he sets off a catastrophic chain of events that turn the city into a bloody battleground between two rival syndicates.
When a highway project construction crew unearths two skeletons in a common grave, Felony Division Chief Claire Talbot reopens an investigation into a string of abductions that took place before she was born. While researching the file, she meets retired cop Marc Hastings, who once worked on the case. Marc has an uncanny familiarity with Claire's habits, and she begins to realize that not all is as it seems.
Eager to be an obedient daughter, Princess Margot accepts her role as a marriage pawn, even as she is charmed by the powerful, charismatic Duc de Guise. Though Margot's heart belongs to Guise, her hand will be offered to Henri of Navarre, a Huguenot leader and a notorious heretic looking to seal a tenuous truce. But the promised peace is a mirage: her mother's schemes are endless, and her brothers plot vengeance in the streets of Paris. When Margot's wedding devolves into the bloodshed of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, she will be forced to choose between her family and her soul.
Ever since Antietam, when he lay delirious among the dead and dying, Trace has been haunted by the country's restless spirits. The curse cost him his family, his calling to the church and damn near his sanity. Then wealthy and reclusive Sabine Fairweather admits to knowing about Trace's curse, and suggests she might be able to help him. As she steers him into one macabre situation after another, his powers flourish. But her meddling has brought Trace to the attention of something much older and more dangerous than any ghost.
In THE BLIZZARD, we are immersed in the atmosphere of a 19th-century Russia. Garin, a district doctor, is desperately trying to reach the village of Dolgoye, where a mysterious epidemic is turning people into zombies. He carries with him a vaccine that will prevent the spread of this terrible disease but is stymied in his travels by an all-consuming snowstorm, an impenetrable blizzard that turns a drive that should last only a few hours into a voyage of days and, finally, a journey into eternity.
In 1668, hangman Jakob Kuisl, his daughter Magdalena, and her husband Simon travel to the town of Bamberg. But what was planned as a family vacation soon becomes a nightmare: a murderer in Bamberg is leaving the severed limbs of victims in the trash outside the city. When rumors quickly spread that the deaths are the work of a werewolf, Jakob must prove the superstition wrong and embarks on a search for the “devil of Bamberg.”
Rachel Jenner is walking in a Bristol park with her eight-year-old son, Ben, when he asks if he can run ahead. It’s an ordinary request on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, and Rachel has no reason to worry --- until Ben vanishes. As hours and then days pass without a sign of Ben, everyone who knew him is called into question. Inevitably, media attention focuses on Rachel, and the public’s attitude toward her begins to shift from sympathy to suspicion. As she desperately pieces together the threadbare clues, Rachel realizes that nothing is quite as she imagined it to be, not even her own judgment.
On Venice’s popular Lido beach, a man is found lying on the shore, his throat slit and his tongue viciously torn out, and his face covered by an unusual antique mask. Superiors inside the Venice Carabinieri have finally given Captain Kat Tapo permission to run her first murder case. But when she learns that the mask is a Masonic “hoodwink” --- and that the circumstances of the man’s death are eerily similar to the Masonic punishment for betrayal --- she suspects that her appointment has darker implications.
Former combat medic Camaro Espinoza earns her living running night charter catch-and-release fishing trips off the coast of Miama. Trouble comes knocking in the form of Parker Story, a man in over his head with all the wrong people. Parker wants to book Camaro's boat to run a small errand off the coast of Cuba. Camaro knows she shouldn't get involved. But Parker's got a teenaged daughter named Lauren, and Parker's associates have threatened to harm her if the mission doesn't go off without a hitch.
Anne Forestier finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time when she is trapped in the middle of a bank robbery. Shot three times, she is lucky to survive --- and morbidly unlucky to remember the face of her assailant. Followed home from her hospital bed, Anne is in grave danger. But one thing stands in her favor --- a dangerously vengeful partner, carrying the scars of devastating loss, who will break all the rules to protect the woman he loves: Commandant Camille Verhoeven.
Tell us about the books you’ve finished reading with your comments and a rating of 1 to 5 stars. During the contest period from December 19th to January 9th at noon ET, three lucky readers each will be randomly chosen to win a copy of THE FIRST TIME I SAW HIM by Laura Dave and SKYLARK by Paula McLain.
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Coming Soon
Curious about what books will be released in the months ahead so you can pre-order or reserve them? Then click on the months below.
December's Books on Screen roundup includes the films The Housemaid, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw, 100 Nights of Hero,The Chronology of Water and Not Without Hope; the series premiere of Paramount+'s "Little Disasters"; the season premiere of "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" on Disney+ and Hulu; the season finales of HBO's "IT: Welcome to Derry" and Apple TV+'s "Down Cemetery Road"; the midseason finales of "Tracker" and "Watson" on CBS; and the DVD/Blu-ray releases of Karen Kingsbury's The Christmas Ring and Black Phone 2.