Adult

In the early hours of Christmas Eve, the sleeper train from London to the Highlands derails, along with the festive plans of its travelers. With the train buried in snow in the middle of nowhere, the passengers have only each other, and not all of them will reach their holiday celebrations. As a killer tries to pick passengers off one by one, former Met Detective Roz Parker can't resist one last investigation, but murder in a locked room is a formidable puzzle for even the most seasoned investigator. As accusations begin to fly, the group of travelers fractures and unexpected alliances form. Can Roz find the culprit before anyone else is lost?

Everyone wants Iris Kelly to settle down, but she holds firmly to her no dating rule. There’s only one problem: Iris is a romance author facing an imminent deadline for her second book, and she’s completely out of ideas. Perfectly happy to ignore her problems, Iris goes to a bar and meets a sexy stranger, Stefania. A night of dancing and making out turns into the worst one-night stand Iris has ever had. To get her mind off everything, Iris tries out for the lead role in a local play, a queer retelling of “Much Ado About Nothing,” but comes face-to-face with Stefania, whose real name turns out to be Stevie. Desperate to save face in front of her friends, Stevie asks Iris to play along as her girlfriend. As the two women play the part of a happy couple, lines start to blur, and they’re left wondering who will make the real first move.

Katerina Wilmot and Christopher Petruchio shared backyards as kids, but as adults they won’t even share the same hemisphere. That is, until Kate makes a rare visit home, and their fiery animosity rekindles into a raging inferno. But when a drunken Kate confesses she’s only been hostile because she thought he hated her, Christopher vows to make peace with Kate once and for all. Tempting as it is to be swept away by her nemesis-turned-gentleman, Kate isn’t sure she can trust his charming good-guy act. When Christopher’s persistence and Kate’s curiosity lead to an impassioned kiss, they realize “peace” is the last thing that will ever be possible between them. As desire gives way to deeper feelings, Kate and Christopher must decide if it’s truly better to hate than to never risk their hearts.

In HITCHCOCK’S BLONDES, Laurence Leamer offers an intimate journey into the lives of eight legendary actresses whose stories helped chart the course of Alfred Hitchcock’s career --- from his early days in the British film industry, to his triumphant American debut, to his Hollywood heyday and beyond. Through the stories of June Howard-Tripp, Madeleine Carroll, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Janet Leigh, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint and Tippi Hedren --- who starred in 14 of Hitchcock’s most notable films and who bore the brunt of his fondness and sometimes fixation --- we can finally start to see the enigmatic man himself. After all, “his” blondes (as he thought of them) knew the truths of his art, his obsessions and desires, as well as anyone.

While filming on location in scenic Santa Barbara, California, Peter Barrington and Ben Bacchetti look to expand Centurion Studios' business by making a deal with a young Croatian tech billionaire. But when the magnate’s wife is kidnapped, Teddy Fay is brought in to assess the threat and recover the young woman. As Teddy unravels the threads of her disappearance, he quickly comes to find an old vendetta seething at the center, one that puts them all at risk. And danger is lurking even nearer to home as an obsessive fan with perilous intentions weasels his way onto the film set. It’s only Teddy who can stop him from getting too close for comfort.

Alex Sand was playing basketball with his two young sons when all three were shot in cold blood. A wealthy federal judge, there’s no short list of people who could have a vendetta against Alex. But the gruesome murders, especially that of his children, turn their St. Paul community on its head. Alex was on the verge of a major donation to a local housing charity, Heart/Twin Cities. With the money in limbo, eyes suddenly turn to his grieving widow, Margaret Cooper, to see what she might do with the money. Margaret struggles to move forward and can’t imagine how or why anyone would target her husband. With public pressure mounting and both the local police force and the FBI hitting dead end after dead end, Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are called in to do what others could not: find answers.

The year is 1901. England’s beloved queen has died, and her aging son has finally taken the throne. In the eastern city of Norwich, bright and inquisitive young Edith Holler spends her days among the boisterous denizens of the Holler Theatre, warned by her domineering father that the playhouse will literally tumble down if she should ever leave its confines. She decides to write a play of her own: a stage adaptation of the legend of Mawther Meg, a monstrous figure said to have used the blood of countless children to make the local delicacy known as Beetle Spread. But when her father suddenly announces his engagement to a peculiar, imposing woman --- heir to the actual Beetle Spread fortune --- Edith scrambles to protect her father, the theatre and her play from the newcomer’s sinister designs.

The ghost of Kai, the love of Cam's life, won't leave Cam alone. He follows Cam from LA back home to Houston, his visits wild, tender and unpredictable. But Cam has changed, and when he reenters the orbit of his childhood best friend, TJ, and his family's bakery, neither Cam nor TJ is sure how to navigate their charged estrangement. Searching for a way past all the wounds and secrets --- a way to be okay together, maybe for the first time --- the pair find hope and sustenance from the most unlikely source.

Three members of a wealthy family, along with their live-in nanny, are pulled from their burning mansion, already dead from gunshot wounds. The only survivor is a young boy whose memory of the event raises more questions than answers. The police seem happy to settle on a simple explanation and arrest the most obvious suspect, but Cameron Winter knows that obvious solutions are seldom the correct ones, and all too often they hide a darker truth. While Winter’s investigation is welcomed by many who knew the victims, the lead detective makes it clear he wants Winter not only to stop looking for answers, but to stay out of his town altogether. Winter begins to understand why as he slowly uncovers crimes and unsavory behavior that had been ignored long before the killings.

Madeline Martin is the young owner of a thriving business, The Next Chapter Bookshop. When Harley Granger, a failed novelist turned true crime podcaster, drifts into her shop in the days before Christmas, he seems intent on digging up events that Madeline would much rather forget. She’s the only surviving victim of Evan Handy, the man who was convicted of murdering her best friend, Steph, and is suspected in the disappearance of two sisters, also good friends of Madeline’s. Since Evan Handy went to jail, three other young women have gone missing, most recently a young college dropout named Lolly. Five young women missing in the same area in a decade. Are they connected? Was Evan Handy innocent after all? Or was there someone else there that night? Someone who is still satisfying his dark appetites?