Adult

One morning before school, two children find the naked bodies of five men hanging from the gym ceiling. The case leads Detective Konrad Simonsen and his murder squad to the school janitor, who may know more about the killings than he is telling. Soon, Simonsen realizes that each of the five murdered men had a dark and terrible secret in common. And when Simonsen’s own daughter is targeted, he must race to find the culprit before his whole world is destroyed.

Rebecca Solnit explores the ways we make our lives out of stories, and how we are connected by empathy, by narrative, by imagination. In the course of unpacking some of her own stories --- of her mother and her decline from memory loss, of a trip to Iceland, of an illness --- Solnit revisits fairy tales and entertains other stories. Woven together, these stories create a map that charts the boundaries and territories of storytelling, reframing who each of us is and how we might tell our story.

In the wilds of Mongolia, a research satellite has crashed, triggering an explosive search for its valuable cargo. At the Vatican, a package arrives containing two strange artifacts that both came from the same body: the long dead Mongol king Genghis Khan. Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force set out to discover a truth tied to the fall of the Roman Empire, to a mystery going back to the birth of Christianity, and to a weapon hidden for centuries that holds the fate of humanity.

Noa P. Singleton was found guilty of first-degree murder 10 years ago. Now, just six months away from her execution date, Noa is visited by Marlene Dixon, an attorney who is also the heartbroken mother of the woman Noa was imprisoned for killing. She tells Noa that she has had a change of heart and will do everything in her power to convince the governor to commute the sentence to life in prison --- if Noa will finally reveal what led her to commit her crime.

In Fumihiro Kuki’s wealthy family, it’s tradition that a patriarch, when reaching the end of his life, will beget one last child to dedicate to causing misery in a world that cannot be controlled or saved. Eleven-year-old Fumihiro will be specially educated to learn to create as much destruction and unhappiness in the world around him as a single person can. But as his education progresses, he begins to question his father's mandate.

As the lives and marriages of four couples unfold in surprising ways, we meet Frances Gerety, a young advertising copywriter in 1947. Frances is working on the De Beers campaign and she needs a signature line, so, one night before bed, she scribbles a phrase on a scrap of paper: “A Diamond Is Forever.” And that line changes everything.

It's 1967, and Moe Prager is wandering aimlessly through his college career and his life. All that changes when his girlfriend Mindy is viciously beaten into a coma and left to die on the streets of Brooklyn. Suddenly, Moe has purpose. He is determined to find out who's done this to Mindy and why. But Mindy is not the only person in Moe's life who's in danger. Someone is also trying to kill his best and oldest friend, Bobby Friedman.

When the story opens on May 11, 2011, Sara’s son, Jason, has been missing for nine days from a Special Operations Forces mission on the same night as the Bin Laden raid. Through letters Jason writes home from his training and early missions, we get a picture of a strong, compassionate leader. His exceptional abilities will give him the chance to participate in a wholly different level of assignment, the most important and dangerous of his career. At the end, Sara will find herself on an unexpected journey full of surprises.

People who suffer from alcoholism as well as their families and friends know that while it is possible to get sober, there is no one “right” way to do this. Now, award-winning mystery writer Martha Grimes and her son, Ken Grimes, offer two points of view on their struggles with alcoholism. In alternating chapters, they share their stories --- stories of drinking, recovery, relapse, friendship, travel, work, success and failure.