Adult

When Nora agrees to help her new husband, Paul, and his family fix up Hidden Lake Camp, she didn't expect it to be in such a state of ruin. Only a few months, he said. They'd drive north to get Paul's elderly parents settled while he and his brother make enough repairs to sell the property. But the summer camp and its deep lake have other plans. On the first night, Nora stumbles through a first meal with his difficult family. Her sister-in-law shows off a prized collection of handmade knives, 13 in all. Long summer days stretch before them, and one by one the knives begin to disappear. There's talk of ghosts, secret rooms, and someone at the summer camp found dead in the tall grass.

On the streets of Boston, the world is divided into the ordinary Usuals and the paranormal Unorthodox. And in the Department of Unorthodox Affairs, the Auditors are the magical elite, government-sanctioned witches with spells at their command. Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby is not one of those witches. After flunking out of the Auditor training program and being dismissed as “not Department material,” Grimsby tried to resign himself to life as a mediocre witch. But he can’t help hoping he’ll somehow get another chance to prove his skill. That opportunity comes with a price when his former mentor, aka the most dangerous witch alive, is murdered down the street from where he works, and Grimsby is the Auditors’ number one suspect.

With a name like Astra Noel Snow, holiday spirit isn’t just a seasonal specialty --- it’s a way of life. But after a stinging divorce, Astra’s yearly trip to the Milwaukee Christmas market takes on a whole new meaning. She’s ready to eat, drink and be merry, especially with the handsome stranger who saves the best kringle for her at his family bakery. For Jack Clausen, the Julemarked with its snowy lights and charming shops stays the same, while the world outside the joyful street changes, magically leaping from one December to the next every four weeks. He’s never minded living this charmed existence until Astra shows him the life he’s been missing outside of the festive red brick alley.

A car explodes along a quiet Prague side street. Among the dead is an undercover Treadstone agent. It's not unusual for such men to meet their fates on an operation, but in this case there's one catch. None of his superiors know what he was doing there. Two Blackbriar operatives, Helen Jouvert and Donovan Wade, are sent to investigate. Their search for answers will take them deeper into the world of conspiracy and fake news than they ever expected. Treadstone and Blackbriar may be two sides of the same coin, intelligence and counterintelligence, but they have one thing in common: answers can be the deadliest commodity of all.

Head-in-the-stars Audrey is about to marry down-to-earth Josh. Though they are polar opposites, they have a healthy, stable relationship. But romance should be unpredictable and full of fireworks, and as the big day approaches, Audrey has found herself wondering if Josh really is "The One." So when Josh’s sister shows up to the rehearsal dinner with Fred, Audrey’s "What If? guy" --- the man she met six years ago and had one amazing day with --- Audrey finds herself torn. When everything that could go wrong with the wedding starts to go wrong, Audrey has to ask herself: Is fate trying to stop her from making a huge mistake? Or does destiny just have a really twisty sense of humor?

Edward Rulloff was a brilliant yet utterly amoral murderer whose crimes spanned decades and whose victims were chosen out of revenge, out of envy and sometimes out of necessity. From his humble beginnings in upstate New York to the dazzling salons and social life he established in New York City, at every turn Rulloff used his intelligence and regal bearing to evade detection and avoid punishment. He could talk his way out of any crime...until one day, his luck ran out. Kate Winkler Dawson draws on hundreds of source materials and never-before-shared historical documents to present one of the first glimpses into the mind of a serial killer through the scientists whose work would come to influence criminal justice for decades to come.

“We’re going to murder people who need to be murdered.” So begins a press release from a mysterious group known only as “The Five” shortly after a vicious predator is murdered in San Francisco. The Five is believed to be made up of vigilante killers who are very bored…and very rich. They target the worst of society --- rapists, murderers and thieves --- and then use their unlimited resources to offset the damage done by those who they’ve killed, donating untraceable Bitcoin to charities and victims via the dark net. The Five soon become the most popular figures on social media, a modern-day Batman, though their motives may not be entirely pure. After a woman is murdered in the Twin Cities, Virgil Flowers and Lucas Davenport are sent in to investigate. And they soon have their hands full.

When Sadie and Max are selected as contestants on the famed reality singing show "Starmaker," each thinks they’ve finally gotten their big Nashville break. But then they are paired up for duet week and stun the world with their romantic onstage chemistry. With fans going wild for #Saxie, the network demands that they remain a duo on and offstage, or exit the competition. Faking a relationship until their final performance in the "Starmaker" holiday special shouldn't be too hard, except for one small problem: Sadie and Max can’t stand each other. But with their dreams just within reach, they agree to the ruse. Will their fake relationship be exposed before they can win? Or might their phony connection turn real by the Christmas finale?

The seven houses in these seven stories are strange. A person is missing, or a truth, or memory; some rooms are enticing, some unmoored, others empty. But in Samanta Schweblin's tense, visionary tales, something always creeps back inside: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, a child's first encounter with darkness or the fallibility of parents. In each story, twists and turns will unnerve and surprise. Schweblin never takes the expected path and instead digs under the skin, revealing surreal truths about our sense of home, of belonging, and of the fragility of our connections with others.

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old. He doesn’t know what happened to her --- only that her books have been banned --- and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him. Then one day, Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, and soon he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of heroic librarians, and finally to New York City, where he will learn the truth about what happened to his mother and what the future holds for them both.