Adult

Steven Blitz didn’t think about his own safety when he saw the man trying to force a woman into his car. He stepped in to defend her and got a knife to the gut for his troubles. But when he wakes up in the hospital from what should have been a fatal wound, he finds the whole world changed --- a different president in the White House, a loving family when he’d been on the verge of divorce, more money in the bank than he’s ever seen. There’s a dark side, though: in this world, Steven Blitz is not a good man. And now he has to get himself out of serious trouble without even knowing what it is he has done wrong.

In her luminous new memoir in essays, Mary Pipher --- as she did in her New York Times bestseller WOMEN ROWING NORTH --- taps into a cultural moment, to offer wisdom, hope and insight into loss and change. Drawing from her own experiences and expertise as a psychologist specializing in women, trauma and the effect of our culture on our mental health, she looks inward in A LIFE IN LIGHT to what shaped her as a woman, one who has experienced darkness throughout her life but was always drawn to the light. Her plainspoken depictions of her hard childhood and life's difficulties are dappled with moments of joy and revelation, tragedies and ordinary miseries, glimmers and shadow.

Funmi, Enitan and Zainab first meet at university in Nigeria and become friends for life despite their differences. Their friendship is complicated but enduring, and over the course of the book, the reader learns about their loves and losses. Now, some 30 years later, the three women are reunited for the first time, in Lagos. The occasion: Funmi’s daughter, Destiny, is getting married. But as the big day approaches, it becomes clear that something is not right. As the novel builds powerfully, the complexities of the mothers’ friendship --- and the private wisdom each has earned --- come to bear on a riveting, heartrending moment of decision.

Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem. After a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won't give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father. For 10 years, she's run from the town that never understood her, and it feels like nothing has changed. Until she finds a ghost standing at the funeral parlor’s front door, just as broad and infuriatingly handsome as ever, and he’s just as confused about why he’s there as she is.

It’s summer in Detroit, and private eye Amos Walker has just received word that his ex-wife has passed away. He can use a distraction, which arrives in the form of a young, would-be investigative journalist who has gotten in way over his head. He needs Walker’s protection, but is suspiciously vague about why and from whom. And he’s not the only one playing their cards way too close to their chest. Walker just wants answers, but what he finds is a dead body --- and enough trouble to put him on ice for good, unless he can discover what everyone’s not telling him.

Jada Townsend-Matthews is the most reviled woman in America after turning down a proposal on a reality dating show. When she comes home to lick her wounds, Jada finds herself working at San Diego's newest cupcake bakery, Sugar Blitz, alongside the uptight owner and professional football player Donovan Dell. When a reporter mistakenly believes Jada and Donovan are an item, they realize they can use the misunderstanding to their advantage to help the struggling bakery and rehabilitate Jada's image. Faking a relationship should be simple, but sometimes love is the most unexpected ingredient.

After moving from a small country town to Seattle, Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. A working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they’re deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom. When they discover remote Dutch Island, off-limits to outside visitors, the family talks their way onto the ferry, taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram. But as soon as they set foot on the island, which is run by a tightly knit clan of locals, everything feels wrong. Then a shocking accident propels the Baxters from an unsettling situation into an absolute nightmare.

Agatha Christie is the bestselling novelist of all time, and nearly every story she ever wrote involves one --- or, more commonly, several --- dead bodies. And the cause of death, the motives behind violent crimes, the clues that inevitably are left behind, and the people who put the pieces together to solve the mystery invite the reader to analyze the evidence and race to find the answer before the detective does. Christie wouldn't have talked of "forensics" as it is understood today, but in each tale she harnesses the power of human observation, ingenuity and scientific developments of the era. A fascinating, science-based deep dive, THE SCIENCE OF MURDER examines the use of fingerprints, firearms, handwriting, blood spatter analysis, toxicology and more in Christie's beloved works.

Nora Hamilton, a romance channel screenwriter, turns her marriage’s collapse into cash and writes the best script of her life. No one is more surprised than her when it’s picked up for the big screen and set to film on location at her 100-year-old-home. When former Sexiest Man Alive Leo Vance is cast as her ne’er-do-well husband, Nora’s life will never be the same. The morning after shooting wraps, Leo has a proposition. He will pay a thousand dollars a day to stay for a week. The extra seven grand would give Nora breathing room, but it’s the need in his eyes that makes her say yes. Seven days: it’s the blink of an eye or an eternity depending on how you look at it. Enough time to fall in love. Enough time to break your heart.

On a small Pacific island, a brother and sister tune in to a breaking news radio bulletin. It is 1985, and an Indian grocer has just been attacked by nativists aligned with the recent military coup. Bhumi hears this news from her locked-down dorm room in the capital city. But when her friendship with the daughter of a prominent government official becomes a liability, she must flee her unstable home for California. Jaipal is stuck working in the family store, avoiding their father’s wrath, with nothing but his hidden desires to distract him. Desperate for money and connection, he seizes a sudden opportunity to take his life into his own hands for the first time. But his decision may leave him vulnerable to the island’s escalating volatility.