Adult

On the night of her high school graduation, a young woman follows her older sister, Debbie, to a bar. After the two share a bag of unidentified pills, the evening turns into a haze of sensual and risky interactions. Our unnamed narrator has always been under Debbie’s spell. Despite her own hesitations, she has always said yes to nights like these. That is, until Debbie disappears. Falling deeper into the life she cultivated with her sister, our narrator gets a job as an emergency room secretary where she steals pills to sell on the side. Cue Sasha, a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who claims to be a psychic tasked with acting as the narrator’s spiritual guide. The nature of this relationship evolves and blurs, a kaleidoscope of friendship, sex, mysticism and ambiguous power dynamics.

When Nora, a withdrawn American teenager, is sent to live with relatives in Turin, she meets Nicola, the enigmatic son of the most powerful aristocratic family in Italy. Years later, the two reconnect in New York and begin a heated affair. Propelled by disorienting desire, Nora quickly becomes entangled in Nicola’s insular, menacing world of old-world luxury and family secrets. When she suspects she’s being used in a secret plot to overthrow his corrupt father, Nora willfully turns submissive to Nicola, pushing against the boundaries of her own moral limits until she finds herself spiraling on a path of self-destruction.

True crime, as an entertainment genre, has always prioritized clear narrative arcs: victims wronged, police detectives in pursuit, suspects apprehended, justice delivered. But what stories have been ignored? In EVIDENCE OF THINGS SEEN, 14 of the most innovative crime writers working today cast a light on the cases that give crucial insight into our society. Wesley Lowery writes about a lynching left unsolved for decades by an indifferent police force and a family’s quest for answers. Justine van der Leun reports on the thousands of women in prison for defending themselves from abuse. May Jeong reveals how the Atlanta spa shootings tell a story of America. This anthology pulls back the curtain on how crime itself is a by-product of America’s systemic harms and inequalities.

Pompeii was a lively resort flourishing in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius at the height of the Roman Empire. When Vesuvius erupted in an explosion of flame and ash, the entire town would be destroyed. Some of its citizens died in the chaos, some escaped the mountain’s wrath…and these are their stories: A boy loses his innocence in Pompeii’s flourishing streets. An heiress dreads her wedding day, not knowing it will be swallowed by fire. An ex-legionary stakes his entire future on a gladiator bout destined never to be finished. A crippled senator welcomes death, until a tomboy on horseback comes to his rescue. A young mother faces an impossible choice for her unborn child as the ash falls. A priestess and a prostitute seek redemption and resurrection as the town is buried.

After hunting down a rogue spy as part of an elite CIA counterespionage unit, Garrett Kohl returns home to Texas. But it isn’t long before he’s approached in secret by an engineer working at a nearby nuclear weapons plant. Utilizing a unique skill set, Garrett embarks on an off-the-books investigation and learns that Iranian operatives are blackmailing weapons facility employees and potentially planning a devastating act of sabotage and destruction. Already engaged in an intense shadow war with Tehran and their Quds Force spies, Garrett’s CIA team rallies to take down the extortionists and dismantle their operation. But before they can get their mission underway, enemy commandos hijack a train carrying nuclear weapons and activate a lone wolf assassin to murder the visiting U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Chronic pelvic pain has forced Avital Cohen to sideline her photography dreams and her love life. It’s all she can do to manage her family’s kosher bakery, Best Babka in Brooklyn, without collapsing. She needs hired help. And distractingly handsome Ethan Lippmann seems to be the perfect fit. Except Ethan isn’t there to work --- he’s undercover, at the behest of his grandfather. Though Lippmann’s is a household name when it comes to mass-produced kosher baked goods, they don’t have the charm of Avital’s bakery. Or her grandfather’s world-famous pumpkin spice babka recipe. As they bake side by side, Ethan soon finds himself more interested in Avital than in stealing family secrets, especially as he helps her find the chronic pain relief --- and pleasure --- she’s been missing.

Annie, Edward and their young daughter, Rose, live in a cramped apartment. One night, without warning, they find a beautiful terrace hidden in their closet. It wasn’t there before, and it seems to only appear when their friend Stephanie visits. But every extra bit of space has a hidden cost, and the terrace sets off a seismic chain of events, forever changing the shape of their tiny home, and the shape of the world. TERRACE STORY follows the characters who suffer these repercussions and reverberations. How far can the mind travel when it’s looking for something that is gone? Where do we put our loneliness, longing and desire? What do we do with the emotions that seem to stretch beyond the body, beyond the boundaries of life and death?

Fifteen years ago, Sara Linton’s life changed forever when a celebratory night out ended in a violent attack that tore her world apart. Since then, Sara has remade her life. A successful doctor, engaged to a man she loves, she finally has managed to leave the past behind her. Until one evening, on call in the ER, everything changes. Sara battles to save a broken young woman who’s been brutally attacked. But as the investigation progresses, led by GBI Special Agent Will Trent, it becomes clear that Dani Cooper’s assault is uncannily linked to Sara’s. And the past isn’t going to stay buried forever.

The Titan Project, an international research station off the coast of Australia, discovers a thriving zone of life in an otherwise dead sea. The area teems with a strange bioluminescent coral that defies science yet holds great promise for the future. But the loss of a military submarine in the area triggers a brutal attack and sets in motion a geological disaster that destabilizes an entire region. Massive quakes, volcanic eruptions and deadly tsunamis herald a greater cataclysm to come --- for something is stirring miles under the ocean, a threat hidden for millennia. As seas turn toxic and coastlines burn, can Sigma Force stop what has been let loose --- especially as an old adversary returns, hunting them and thwarting their every move?

Nessa Garvey’s sister, Deena, vanished without a trace in Philadelphia in 2004. In all that time, Nessa has never once doubted what her instincts told her: her sister’s ex-husband has gotten away with an unspeakable crime. Nessa’s niece, Ruby, is raised by her father, the man Nessa suspects, in rural Vermont on the shores of Lake Champlain. Ruby learns how to hunt, how the plants and trees grow, how to avoid making her father angry. The one question she longs to ask is the one she knows she cannot voice: What really happened to her mother? Over 14 years and 400 miles apart, these two women slowly begin to unearth the family history of insidious power and control that has shaped them both in such different ways. But can they reach each other in time?