Aloysius Archer is in Los Angeles to ring in the New Year with an old friend, aspiring actress Liberty Callahan, when their evening is interrupted by an acquaintance of Callahan’s: Eleanor Lamb, a screenwriter in dire straits. After a series of increasingly chilling events, Eleanor fears that her life is in danger, and she wants to hire Archer to look into the matter. Archer suspects that Eleanor knows more than she’s saying, but before he can officially take on her case, a dead body turns up inside of Eleanor’s home…and Eleanor herself disappears. With the help of Callahan and his partner, Willie Dash, Archer launches an investigation that will take him from mob-ridden Las Vegas to the glamorous world of Hollywood to the darkest corners of Los Angeles.
After a wild bet, gourmet grilled-cheese sandwich, and cuddle with a baby goat, Alexis Montgomery has had her world turned upside down. The cause: Daniel Grant, a ridiculously hot carpenter who’s 10 years younger than her and as casual as they come --- and their chemistry is undeniable. While her ultra-wealthy parents want her to carry on the family legacy of world-renowned surgeons, Alexis doesn’t need glory or fame. And every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she’s discovering just what’s really important. Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her family and giving up the opportunity to help thousands of people.
Alice, a Taiwanese immigrant, struggles to create a project about the enigmatic downtown performance artist Tehching Hsieh and his monumental, year-long 1980s performance pieces. Meanwhile, she becomes the caretaker for her aging stepfather, a Vietnam vet whose dream of making traditional Chinese furniture dissolved in alcoholism and dementia. As Alice roots deeper into Hsieh’s radical use of time and his mysterious disappearance from the art world, her project starts metabolizing events from her own life. She wanders from subway rides to street protests, loses touch with a friend and tenderly observes her father’s slow decline.
On his first night with the Detroit PD, Officer Walter O’Brien is called to a murder scene. A terrified 20-year-old has bludgeoned her kidnapper with skill that shocks even O’Brien’s veteran partner. The young woman is also a brilliant escape artist. Her bold flight from police custody makes the case impossible to solve --- and, for Walter, even more impossible to forget. By the time Walter is promoted to detective, his fascination with the missing, gray-eyed woman is approaching obsession. And when Walter discovers that he’s not alone in his search, one truth is certain. This deadly string of secrets didn’t begin in his home city --- but he’s going to make sure it ends there.
When Mitya was two years old, he swallowed his grandmother’s sewing needle. For his family, it marks the beginning of the end, the promise of certain death. For Mitya, it is a small, metal treasure that guides him from within. As he grows, his life mirrors the uncertain future of his country, which is attempting to rebuild itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mitya finds himself facing a different sort of ambiguity: Is he a boy, as everyone keeps telling him, or is he not quite a boy, as he often feels? After suffering horrific abuse from his cousin, Vovka, who has returned broken from war, Mitya embarks on a journey across underground Moscow to find something better, a place to belong.
When 16-year-old Cindra Zoeller is sent to a reform camp in Montana after being involved in an armed robbery, she is thrust into a world of mountains, cowboys, prayers, miscreants and people from all walks of life like she’s never seen in suburban Massachusetts. At Camp Challenge, she becomes transfixed by Lucky, a camp employee of mysterious origin, and the chemistry between them is instant and profound. The pair escape together into the wilderness to create an idyllic life far from the reach of the law. But they can run from the outside world for only so long, and the consequences of their naïve fantasy of a future together --- and circumstances shaped by skin color --- will keep them apart for decades.
The only daughter of the kingdom of Kekaya, Kaikeyi is raised on tales of the gods. Yet she watches as her father unceremoniously banishes her mother, and listens as her own worth is reduced to how great a marriage alliance she can secure. And when she calls upon the gods for help, they never seem to hear. Desperate for some measure of independence, she turns to the texts she once read with her mother and discovers a magic that is hers alone. With this power, Kaikeyi transforms herself from an overlooked princess into a warrior, diplomat and most favored queen. But as the evil from her childhood stories threatens the cosmic order, the path she has forged clashes with the destiny the gods have chosen for her family.
Despite her training and years of experience as an oncology and hospice nurse, Theresa Brown finds it difficult to navigate the medical maze from the other side of the bed. Why is she so often left in the dark about procedures and treatments? Why is she expected to research her own best treatment options? Why is there so much red tape? At times she’s mad at herself for not speaking up and asking for what she needs, but she knows that being a “difficult” patient could mean she gets worse care. Of the almost four million women in this country living with breast cancer, many have had, like Brown, a treatable form of the disease. Both unnerving and extremely relatable, her experience shows us how our for-profit healthcare industry “cures” us but at the same time leaves so many of us feeling alienated and uncared for.
1978: At her renowned treatment center in Vermont, psychiatrist Helen Hildreth is acclaimed for her compassionate work with the mentally ill. But when she’s home with her grandchildren, Vi and Eric, she’s just Gran. Then one day, Gran brings home a child to stay with the family. Although Iris does not behave like a normal girl, Vi and Eric invite her to join their Monster Club, where they catalogue all kinds of monsters and dream up ways to defeat them. 2019: Lizzy Shelley, the host of the popular podcast “Monsters Among Us,” is traveling to Vermont, where a young girl has been abducted, and a monster sighting has the town in an uproar. Lizzy knows better than anyone that monsters are real --- and one of them is her very own sister.
A museum curator is found shot point-blank, his home torn apart. It's the sort of random crime destined to fester in an evidence locker. But it's a case tailor-made for academic turned detective Tully Jarsdel --- he can't leave any question unanswered. In pursuit of an untouchable killer, Jarsdel soon uncovers a web of fraud and corruption that leads him to sunny Catalina Island, Hollywood's bygone playground. There, nothing is as it should be: the past is ever-present, and Jarsdel unwittingly finds himself embroiled in a widespread conspiracy. While reckoning with a dark legacy, he'll exhume long-buried secrets of LA's troubled past and deadly consequences.
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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.