Adult

For the first time in his life, journalist Jack Fiorello is out of work. The 65-year-old music critic is adrift; not even his wife, Molly, can lift him from his funk. Then a reader calls with a tip, and Jack is thrust into a story involving Katy Shayne, a long-dead singer-songwriter, and what very well might be her murder. Traveling across Greenwich Village and down to Nashville, Jack unravels long-forgotten facts that led to Katy's death. In doing so, he puts himself at mortal risk for the first time in his career. Is it worth the effort? All this for an unknown singer and her songs? Though beaten and battered, Jack answers with a resounding "yes."

HELLIONS is an electric story collection that blends folklore, fairy tales, Southern Gothic and horror, reveling in the collision of the familiar with the wildly surreal. In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript, pining for Christ’s love. During a long, muggy July in rural South Carolina, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. And at a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains, a group of mothers contends with the supernatural talents their children have picked up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the woods.

When Diane Schwebe, the director of a major New York museum, is awakened in the early morning by a text message from the museum’s lawyer, it is the start of a 24-hour roller-coaster ride. Diane has sacrificed many things in her life to help the fading institution stave off irrelevance and financial ruin. In this battle, she’s surrounded by her stalwart supporters. Orbiting her is a motley assortment of museum employees, each on the precipice of collapse or revelation --- among them a line cook staring down a huge opportunity he’s not sure he wants; a costume curator stuck in an inescapable rut; and the ambivalent curator of the museum’s film program, whose first day on the job might very well be his last. On this day of the museum’s annual gala, every plate that Diane has kept spinning will fall --- and by daybreak, someone will be dead.

After fleeing a patricidal prince, legendary merchant Loulie al-Nazari and banished prince Mazen bin Malik find themselves in the realm of jinn. But instead of sanctuary, they find a world on the cusp of collapse. The jinn cities, long sheltered beneath the Sandsea by the magic of its kings, are sinking. Amid the turmoil, political alliances are forming, and rebellion is on the rise. When Loulie assists a dissenter --- one of her bodyguard’s old comrades --- she puts herself in the center of a centuries-old war. Trapped in a world that isn’t her own and wielding magic that belongs to a fallen king, Loulie must decide: Will she carry on someone else’s legacy or carve out her own?

Business has never been better for Nura Khan. While a single 31-year-old matchmaker normally would raise some perfectly threaded eyebrows in the community, Nura’s childhood best friend, Azar, is willing to double as her pretend fiancé at her clients’ weddings --- even though Nura’s feelings for him might not be so pretend. While it’s not uncommon to get the occasional hate mail from rejected prospective clients, Nura is blindsided after a couple’s carefully constructed wedding implodes, the first in a cascading chain of suspicious and increasingly terrifying events. Someone is taking things too far, and with Azar and her matchmaking team by her side, Nura embarks on a dangerous cat-and-mouse game that threatens not only her safety but everything she has worked so hard to build.

When Blair McGowan, the mail person with the longest postal route in the country of over 300 miles a day, goes missing the question becomes: Where do you look for her? The Postal Inspector for the State of Wyoming elicits Sheriff Longmire to mount an investigation into her disappearance, and Walt does everything but mail it in. Posing as a letter-carrier himself, the good sheriff follows her trail and finds himself enveloped in the intrigue of an otherworldly cult.

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, 19-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family and a community on the brink.

Jane Jackson spent her adolescence as "Poor Janey Jakes," the barbecue-sauce-in-her-braces punch line on America's fifth-favorite sitcom. Now she’s trying to be taken seriously as a Hollywood studio executive by embracing a new mantra: Fake it till you make it. Desperate to get her first project greenlit and riled up by pompous cinematographer and one-time crush Dan Finnegan, she claimed that she could get mega popstar Jack Quinlan to write a song for the movie. Now Jane must turn to the last man she’d ever want to owe: Dan Finnegan. Because Jack is playing a festival in Dan’s hometown, and Dan has an in. A week in close quarters with Dan as she faces down her past is Jane's idea of hell, but he just might surprise her. While covering up her lie, can they find something true?

Thierry Villar is a well-known tavern poet, familiar with the rogues and shadows of that world, but not at all with courts and power. He is an unlikely person to be caught up in the deadly contests of ambitious royals, assassins and invading armies. But he is indeed drawn into all these things on a savagely cold night in his beloved city of Orane. And so Thierry must use all the intelligence and charm he can muster as political struggles merge with a decades-long war to bring his country to the brink of destruction. As he does, he meets his poetic equal in an aristocratic woman and is drawn to more than one unsettling person with a connection to the world beyond this one. A wide and varied set of people from all walks of life take their places in the rich tapestry of this story.

Having recently moved from London to a small Cornish seaside village, Nova Davies started a book club at the local community center, but so far it’s a disaster. The five members disagree on everything, and to make matters worse, a significant sum of money is stolen during one of the meetings, putting the much-loved community center at risk. Suspicion for the theft falls on book club member Michael, especially when he disappears and a dead body turns up at his house. But the book club has their own theories. Agatha Christie superfan Phyllis is determined to prove Michael’s been framed, while romance reader Arthur believes there’s a mystery woman involved, and teenage sci-fi fan Ash thinks dark forces are at play. But despite the danger closing in, they won’t rest until they’ve cracked the case and gotten everyone safe at home with a book, where they belong.