Adult

It is 1987, and a small Irish community is preparing for a wedding. The day before the ceremony, a group of young friends, including the bride and groom, are involved in an accident. Three survive. Three are killed. The lives of the families are shattered, and the rifts between them ripple throughout the small town. Connor survived, but living among the angry and the mourning is almost as hard as carrying the shame of having been the driver. He leaves the only place he knows for another life, taking his secrets with him. Eventually he makes a home for himself in New York, where he finds shelter and the possibility of forging a new life. But the secrets will not be silenced, and Connor will have to confront his past.

It’s the spring of 1969, and henna artist Lakshmi, now married to Dr. Jay Kumar, directs the Healing Garden in Shimla. Her protégé, Malik, has finished his private school education. At 20, he has just met a young woman named Nimmi when he leaves to apprentice at the Facilities Office of the Jaipur Royal Palace. Their latest project: a state-of-the-art cinema. Power and money move seamlessly among the wealthy class, and favors flow from Jaipur’s Royal Palace, but only if certain secrets remain buried. When the cinema’s balcony tragically collapses on opening night, blame is placed where it is convenient. But Malik suspects something far darker and sets out to uncover the truth.

Two young girls plot a murder by witchcraft. Soon afterwards a government clerk dies painfully under mysterious circumstances. His colleague, James Marwood, is asked to investigate, but the task brings unexpected dangers. Meanwhile, architect Cat Hakesby is working for a merchant who lives on Slaughter Street, where the air smells of blood and a captive Barbary lion prowls the stables. Then a prestigious new commission arrives. Cat must design a Poultry House for the woman that the King loves most in all the world. Unbeknownst to all, at the heart of this lies a royal secret so explosive that it could not only rip apart England but change the entire face of Europe.

Three months ago, Lena Nguyen’s estranged twin sister, Cambry, drove to a remote bridge and jumped 200 feet to her death. That is the official police version, but Lena isn’t buying it. Now she’s come to that very bridge, driving her dead twin’s car and armed with a cassette recorder, determined to find out what really happened by interviewing the highway patrolman who allegedly discovered her sister’s body. But Corporal Raymond Raycevic’s story seems a bit off. Perhaps most troubling of all, he is referred to by name in Cambry’s final enigmatic text to her sister: Please Forgive Me. As her twin’s final hours come into focus, Lena’s search turns into a harrowing tooth-and-nail fight for her own survival --- one that will test everything she thought she knew about her sister and herself.

Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, who can hear the thoughts and longings of those around her and feels compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a restless creature of fire, once free to roam the desert but now imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they’ll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and try to pass as human. THE HIDDEN PALACE follows their lives and others as they collide and interleave. Can Chava and Ahmad find their places in the human world while remaining true to each other? Or will their opposing natures and desires eventually tear them apart --- especially once they encounter, thrillingly, other beings like themselves?

When her father dies, Kay Wilkinson can’t cry. Over 10 years, Alzheimer’s had steadily eroded this erudite man into a paranoid lunatic. Both medical professionals, Kay and her husband, Cyril, have seen too many elderly patients in similar states of decay. Although healthy and vital in their early 50s, the couple fears what may lie ahead. To spare themselves and their loved ones such a humiliating and protracted decline, Cyril proposes that they agree to commit suicide together once they’ve both turned 80. When their deal is sealed, the spouses are blithely looking forward to another three decades together. But then they turn 80. SHOULD WE STAY OR SHOULD WE GO portrays 12 parallel universes, each exploring a possible future for Kay and Cyril.

In 1890, estranged brothers Tommy and Billy McBride are living far apart in Queensland, each dealing with the trauma that destroyed their family in different ways. Now 21, Billy bottles his guilt and justifies his past crimes while attempting to revive his father’s former cattle run and navigate his feelings for the young widow Katherine Sullivan. When a judicial inquest is ordered into the McBride family murders and the subsequent reprisal slaughter of the Kurrong people, both Billy and Police Inspector Edmund Noone --- the man who led the massacre --- are called to testify. Billy desperately needs to find Tommy, but the ruthless Noone is determined to find the young man as well, and silence both brothers for good.

In her first life, Ida Russell had been a painter. But now she is Ida Pease, wife to Ezra, a once-charming man who has become an inattentive and altogether unreliable husband. Ezra runs a salvage company in town with his business partner, Mose Barstow, and Ida has left her love for painting behind. It comes as no surprise to Ida when Ezra is hours late for a Thanksgiving dinner, only to leave abruptly for another supposedly urgent business trip to Boston. But then a storm strikes, the ship carrying Ezra and Mose sinks, and they are presumed dead. As she settles the affairs of Ezra’s estate with Henry Barstow, Mose’s brother and executor, Ida must learn to separate truth from lies and what matters from what doesn’t.

Young Elzbieta Rabinek has no fondness for the Germans who patrol Warsaw’s streets and impose their curfews, but has never given much thought to what goes on behind the walls that contain her Jewish neighbors. She knows all too well about German brutality --- and that it's the reason she must conceal her true identity. But in befriending Sara, a nurse who shares her apartment floor, Elzbieta makes a discovery that propels her into a dangerous world of deception and heroism. Using Sara's credentials to smuggle children out of the ghetto brings Elzbieta face to face with the reality of the war behind its walls, and to the plight of the Gorka family, who must make the impossible decision to give up their newborn daughter or watch her starve.

In 1940, Hitler had two choices when it came to the Mediterranean region: stay out, or commit sufficient forces to expel the British from the Middle East. Against his generals’ advice, the Fuhrer committed a major strategic blunder. He ordered the Wehrmacht to seize Crete, allowing the longtime British bastion of Malta to remain in Allied hands. Over the fall of 1941, the Royal Navy and RAF, aided by British intelligence, used the island to launch a punishing campaign against the Germans. But by spring 1942, the British lost their advantage. British submarines and surface warships were withdrawn, and the remaining forces were on the brink of starvation. OPERATION PEDESTAL chronicles the ensuing British mission to save those troops.