The Spinning Jenny was invented in 1770, and with that, a new era of manufacturing and industry changed lives everywhere within a generation. A world filled with unrest wrestles for control over this new world order: A mother’s husband is killed in a work accident due to negligence; a young woman fights to fund her school for impoverished children; a well-intentioned young man unexpectedly inherits a failing business; one man ruthlessly protects his wealth no matter the cost, all the while war cries are heard from France, as Napoleon sets forth a violent master plan to become emperor of the world. As institutions are challenged and toppled in unprecedented fashion, ripples of change ricochet through our characters’ lives as they are left to reckon with the future and a world they must rebuild from the ashes of war.
It's rarely a quiet day for the Thursday Murder Club. Shocking news reaches them --- an old friend has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing. The gang's search leads them into the antiques business, where the tricks of the trade are as old as the objects themselves. As they encounter drug dealers, art forgers and online fraudsters --- as well as heartache close to home --- Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim have no idea whom to trust. With the body count rising, the clock ticking down, and trouble firmly on their tail, has their luck finally run out? And who will be the last devil to die?
Sheriff Walt Longmire and Dog are called on a routine search and rescue to Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains, where Walt finds himself on a rock outcropping remembering when his father told him about the first time he saw a man die. In the late '40s, Bill Sutherland was shot, but the investigation was stymied because no member of the elk camp --- where he was found --- was carrying the caliber rifle that killed the state accountant. When Dog discovers the missing weapon, the sheriff of Absaroka County is plunged headfirst into a cold case. His investigation quickly finds ties to a hidden mineral fund that someone is willing to kill to keep secret. In his relentless pursuit of the truth, Walt discovers the rifle in question belonged to none other than his infamous and uncompromising grandfather, Lloyd Longmire.
A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles. There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch and her own body. In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her. THE VASTER WILDS is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how --- and if --- we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.
In 1986, Syvert Løyning returns from the military to his mother’s home in southern Norway. One evening, his dead father comes to him in a dream. Realizing that he doesn’t really know who his father was, Syvert begins to investigate his life. What he learns changes his past and undermines the entire notion of who he is. But when his mother becomes ill, he no longer has time or space for lofty speculations. In present-day Russia, Alevtina Kotov, a biologist working at Moscow University, is traveling with her young son to the home of her stepfather to celebrate his 80th birthday. When she finally starts looking into her biological father, she learns that he died many years ago and left two sons, Joar and Syvert. Years later, when Syvert and Alevtina meet in Moscow, two very different approaches to life emerge.
It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper --- and cousin by marriage --- of a once-famous novelist, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for 30 years. Mrs. Touchet suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems. The “Tichborne Trial” --- wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title --- captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud?
Flair Hardwicke knows three things: magic is real, love isn’t, and relying on either ends in disaster. So while she’s grateful for the chance to take over her grandmother’s Kansas bakery after she finally leaves her cheating husband, she won’t be embracing Nana’s fortune-telling side-hustle. Hers is a strictly no-magic operation --- until the innocent batch of Tarot card cookies Flair bakes for the town’s Halloween celebration unleashes the power of the family deck, luring Flair’s unpredictable mother to town, tempting Flair’s magic-obsessed daughter, and bringing back Flair’s first love while ensnaring her ex in a curse she can’t break. Flair’s attempts to control the chaos only make things worse, playing right into the hands of a powerful witch.
It has been an eventful morning for Agnes Sharp and the other inhabitants of Sunset Hall, a house share for the old and unruly in the sleepy English countryside. Although they have had some issues (misplaced reading glasses, conflicting culinary tastes, decreasing mobility and gluttonous grandsons), nothing prepares them for an unexpected visit from a police officer. A body has been discovered next door. Everyone puts on a long face for show, but they are secretly relieved the body in question is not the one they’re currently hiding in the shed (sorry, Lillith). It seems the answer to their little problem with Lillith may have fallen right into their laps. All they have to do is find out who murdered their neighbor, so they can pin Lillith’s death on them, thus killing two (old) birds with one stone (cold killer).
It’s been two years since Aki Ito and her family were released from Manzanar detention center and resettled in Chicago with other Japanese Americans. Now the Itos have finally been allowed to return home to California --- but nothing is as they left it. Aki is working as a nurse’s aide at the Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights when an elderly Issei man is admitted with suspicious injuries. When she seeks out his son, she is shocked to recognize her husband’s best friend, Babe Watanabe. Could Babe be guilty of elder abuse? Only a few days later, Little Tokyo is rocked by a murder at the low-income hotel where the Watanabes stay. What secrets have the Watanabes been hiding, and can Aki protect her husband from getting tangled up in a murder investigation?
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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.