At the dawn of a new century, America is falling in love with silent movies, including young Wong Liu Tsong. By 11, Wong Liu is determined to become an actress and already has chosen a stage name: Anna May Wong. At 16, Anna May leaves high school to pursue her Hollywood dreams, defying her disapproving father and her Chinese traditional upbringing. After a series of nothing parts, 19-year-old Anna May gets her big break --- and her first taste of Hollywood fame --- starring opposite Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Bagdad. Yet her beauty and talent isn’t enough to overcome the racism that relegates her to supporting roles. Though she suffers professionally and personally, Anna May fights to win lead roles, accept risqué parts, financially support her family, and keep her illicit love affairs hidden.
All her life, Summer Sutherland felt like the missing piece in a puzzle, left out and looking for the place she truly belongs. And when an at-home DNA test reveals her selfish mother and well-meaning grandfather lied about her father, Summer sets out to discover the truth. Her new instant family comes with two half-sisters: one who accepts her with open arms, the other resistant to the stranger staying in their house. Somehow Summer senses this is where she is meant to be, so she settles into her father’s Carmel home. But while her newfound parent is thrilled to get to know Summer --- and her romantic connection to his business partner, Cody, heats up --- tensions rise within the family. Will she ever fit in? Or should she return to her other life before tearing all their lives apart?
The White House has been breached, and the President is forced to flee to a massive doomsday bunker outside DC to defend against whatever comes next. Only the most trusted agents and officials are allowed in with him. Among them is Erik Hill, who has given his life to the Secret Service. Despite his growing disillusionment from seeing Washington corruption up close, Erik can’t ignore years of instincts honed on the job. The government is under attack, and no one is better equipped to face down the threat than he is. The evidence leads him to a conspiracy at the highest levels of power. As the killers strike inside the bunker, it will take everything Erik has to save his people, himself and his country.
1985. To 12-year-old Mercedes, La Kastellana is home, an island with deep-rooted traditions untouched by the modern world. But this secluded paradise is upended with the arrival of multimillionaire Matthew Meade and his pampered young daughter, Tatiana. The price that Mercedes and the rest of the islanders will pay is more than they ever could have imagined. 2016. Robin has been desperately searching for her missing 17-year-old daughter, Gemma. Finding herself on La Kastellana, Robin quickly realizes she’s out of her depth. No one is willing to help, and she fears she’s running out of time to find her child. But someone has been watching, silently waiting for the moment to expose the dark truth of what really happens on the island of lost girls.
For most of her 80 years, Mary Jackson has endured the steady invasion of tourists, influencers and real estate developers who have discovered the lakeside charm of Good Hart, Michigan, waiting patiently for the arrival of a stranger she’s believed since childhood would one day carry on her legacy --- the Very Cherry General Store. Becky Thatcher came to Good Hart to forget that she’s just turned 40 with nothing to show for it. Ending up at the general store with Mary is not the beach vacation she expected, but the more the feisty octogenarian talks about destiny, the stronger Becky’s memories of her own childhood holidays become, and the strange visions over the lake she was never sure were real. As she works under Mary’s wing for the summer, she starts to believe that destiny could be real.
A novelist attempts to write a book about Mary Shelley, author of FRANKENSTEIN, a mother and artist whose harrowing pregnancies reveal the cost of human reproduction. Soon, however, the novelist’s own painful experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as her increasing awareness of larger threats from climate change to the pandemic, force her to give up on the book and turn instead to writing a contemporary FRANKENSTEIN, based on the story of an old friend who mysteriously reappears in her life.
Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost 40 years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative and often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to the great American midway. Now in the twilight of life, a man who has occupied many colorful lives --- sportswriter, father, husband, ex-husband, friend, real estate agent --- Bascombe finds himself in the most sorrowing role of all: caregiver to his son, Paul, diagnosed with ALS. On a shared winter odyssey to Mount Rushmore, Frank, in typical Bascombe fashion, faces down the mortality that is assured each of us. In doing so, he confronts what happiness might signify at the end of days.
Former Detroit homicide detective Edwin Blake broke into show business as a script consultant on cop movies. Now living in Los Angeles five years later, Blake is suffering from clinical depression, is no longer in demand in film and TV --- and money is short. But things look up when Blake gets a call from wealthy, oddball producer Jason “JP” Perry, telling him he wants to hire him for a future cable TV series. But there’s a catch. First he wants Blake to locate the missing ex-wife of a “friend of a friend” from Chicago. However, Blake is not the only one on the case. Hired gun Warren Poole also has been contracted to find the woman. When a corrupt Hollywood producer, an ex-cop with a conscience, and a career criminal without one all have the same quarry, trouble is bound to ensue.
When Meredith Collins was a child, the little beach town of Cape Sanctuary lived up to its name. Now she’s returning in disgrace. Her late ex-husband swindled investors out of millions of dollars and made Meredith a figure of scorn --- though she knew nothing about his scheme. But she still has the beach cottage she inherited from her grandmother and half ownership of the local café. That’s if her cousin, Tori, will let her through the door. Tori and Meredith were once as close as sisters --- until Meredith chose her neglectful parents’ expectations over their bond. Now widowed with a teenage daughter, Tori isn’t setting out a welcome mat for the woman who let her down so badly. While Meredith tries to make a fresh start, she is drawn to a mysterious writer renting the cottage next door.
To everyone else it was “just” a weekend house party. But for American Nicola Harris, swept off her feet by aristocratic Englishman James Shuttleworth, the weekend is her first chance to penetrate his close-knit circle of posh friends. She is eager to fit in, but she can’t seem to navigate this insular world. Just as she begins to feel welcome, Juliet arrives. Mysterious, stunning, charismatic Juliet is also James’ first love. Although it seems she can do no wrong, outsider Nicola senses something poisonous in her presence, something that sparks insecurity, jealousy, betrayal and violence. Because Juliet is a champion game player, able to lure you into her circle by finding your most vulnerable spot. And when the game she plays turns deadly, everyone is a suspect.
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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.
October's Books on Screen roundup includes the films The Woman in Cabin 10 on Netflix and Regretting You in theaters; the series premieres of HBO's "IT: Welcome to Derry" and Apple TV+'s "Down Cemetery Road"; the season premieres of "Tracker" and "Watson" on CBS; the season finales of USA Network's "The Rainmaker," STARZ's "Outlander: Blood of My Blood," AMC's "The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon" and Apple TV+'s "Slow Horses"; the continuation of "The Morning Show" on Apple TV+; and the DVD/Blu-ray releases of She Rides Shotgun, I Know What You Did Last Summer and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.