Adult

After years of struggling to write following the deaths of his wife and son, English professor Connor Nye publishes his first novel, a thriller about the murder of a young woman. There’s just one problem: Connor didn’t write the book. His missing student did. And then she appears on his doorstep, alive and well, threatening to expose him. Connor’s problems escalate when the police insist details in the novel implicate him in an unsolved murder from two years ago. Soon Connor discovers the crime is part of a disturbing scandal on campus and faces an impossible dilemma --- admit he didn’t write the book and lose his job, or keep up the lie and risk everything. When another murder occurs, Connor must clear his name by unraveling the horrifying secrets buried in his student’s manuscript.

"I love you. In every world." Young real estate agent Madison May is shocked when a client at an open house says these words to her. The man, a stranger, seems to know far too much about her, and professes his love --- shortly before he murders her. To journalist Felicity Staples, the crime seems random and the suspect is in the wind. That is, until Felicity spots the killer on the subway, right before he vanishes. Soon, Felicity senses that her entire universe has shifted. No one remembers Madison May, or Felicity's encounter with the mysterious man. And her cat is missing. Felicity realizes that in her pursuit of Madison's killer, she followed him into a different dimension --- one where everything about her existence is slightly altered.

Lena is a wife and mother whose faith has always been her compass. But can she remain steadfast when the questions grow increasingly complex and the answers could mean the difference between life and death? Lena’s daughter, Ans, has recently moved to the bustling city of Leiden, filled with romantic notions of a new job and a young Dutch police officer. But when she is drawn into Resistance work, her idealism collides with the dangerous reality that comes with fighting the enemy. Miriam is a young Jewish violinist who immigrated for the safety she thought Holland would offer. But as her family settles in Leiden, the events that follow will test them in ways she never could have imagined. The Nazi invasion propels these women onto paths that cross in unexpected, sometimes heartbreaking ways.

Those who have the collecting bug care passionately --- sometimes violently --- about the objects of their obsession. No one covets like a collector, and as you will find in the pages of this new anthology from MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block, a truly dedicated collector will ignore the other nine commandments, too, in his quest for his personal Holy Grail. From Joyce Carol Oates' tale of the ultimate Marilyn Monroe collectible to Dennis Lehane's bookseller with a penchant for other people's tragic correspondence, and culminating in Block's own classic story of a killer with a unique approach to choosing his victims, COLLECTIBLES illustrates the range of the collecting impulse and the lengths people will go to in their hunger to possess the perfect piece.

Elle, a 50-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at “The Paper Palace” --- the family summer place that she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: Last night, Elle and her oldest friend, Jonas, crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, over the next 24 hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn’t forever changed the course of their lives. As Miranda Cowley Heller colors in the experiences that have led Elle to this day, we arrive at her ultimate decision with all its complexity.

Nevada’s attorney general is missing. At dusk on a deserted Nevada highway in a thunderstorm, ex-IRS agent and PI-in-training Mortimer Angel comes across a pretty, scantily clad girl --- Harper Leeman. When Mort offers her a ride, she orders him out of his truck at gunpoint. She tries to take off, but he cuts the valve stem on the rear tire. Realizing she’s in trouble, he wants to help --- but with no spare tire, he devises a creative way to get them out of the hills. On their way down, a rough-looking man stops and asks Mort if he has “seen anyone up in the hills.” Mort realizes the guy is after Harper, who is hiding in the truck. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse chase in northeast Nevada that continues even after Mort finds the attorney general --- Harper’s mother --- dead in the trunk of a car.

El Paso, Texas, is a battleground. It’s an open market for Mexican drug cartels to sell their wares. It’s also a destination for teens looking for fun. Venice Alexander’s 13-year-old son, Roman, was there on a school trip. Now, he and a fellow student have vanished without a trace. Assuming the kidnapping is retaliation for his past incursions against Mexico’s underworld, Jonathan Grave leads his covert operatives to rescue their teammate’s son. But the trail Jonathan follows leads him down unexpected paths where he ends up in the crossfire of a deadly vendetta.

When Gracie Cooper’s father dies, she sets aside her dreams of pursuing her passion for art to take over his Midtown Manhattan champagne shop. She soon finds out that the store’s profit margins are being squeezed perilously tight, and a giant corporation headed by the impossibly handsome but irritatingly arrogant Sebastian Andrews is proposing a buyout. But Gracie can’t bear the thought of throwing away her father’s dream like she did her own. So she seeks advice and solace from someone she’s never met --- the faceless “Sir,” with whom she connected on a blind dating app. Although Gracie finds herself slowly falling for Sir online, she has no idea she’s already met him in real life…and they can’t stand each other.

Eighteen-year-old Jenny Moore is looking forward to a fresh start at college, but the people in her life won’t let her go. When Jenny is viciously stabbed and left for dead, it’s her mother who finds Jenny’s body underneath the pines outside their home in the upscale town of Lewisboro, New York. State police investigator Susan Adler and her consultant partner Liam Dwyer are called to investigate the crime scene, but they sense something is off right away. The clues contradict the story Jenny’s parents keep telling, which makes the entire family suspects in Jenny’s murder. But who did it? Was it the wealthy father? The disappointed mother? The strange, quiet little brother? The jealous best friend? An ex-lover?

In 1961 suburban Cleveland, 10-year-old Edna hides in her bedroom closet, avoiding her disdainful father and distracted mother. Grandma Becky is a shrewd woman who manages her husband Morris' successful floor-scraping business. Although Becky appears to be in charge, she's consumed by hypochondriacal fantasies, and her secrecy leads her sisters Ceal and Libby to suspect something sinister. After discovering a stash of cash and a bedroom full of state-of-the-art medical equipment, they ultimately uncover her addiction to a cocktail of Percocet, Darvon and paregoric. But when people start dropping dead for no apparent reason, things take a darker turn --- and then a shocking event changes everything.