Teddy Crutcher has won Teacher of the Year at the prestigious Belmont Academy, home to the best and brightest. He says his wife couldn’t be more proud --- though no one has seen her in a while. Teddy really can’t be bothered with a few mysterious deaths on campus that are looking more and more like murder or the student digging a little too deep into Teddy’s personal life. His main focus is pushing these kids to their full academic potential. All he wants is for his colleagues --- and the endlessly meddlesome parents --- to stay out of his way. If not, well, they’ll get what they deserve. It’s really too bad that sometimes excellence can come at such a high cost.
Joel and Theo haven’t spoken since the summer they turned 16, but that’s about to change. From the outside Joel looks like the picture of success: a TV scriptwriter with a smash hit who’s still together and in love with his teenage sweetheart, Amber. But he's falling apart at the seams. He's headed home to reconnect with Theo, who has been living in his parents' shed, nursing a broken heart and a wounded ego. Then he gets evicted on his 30th birthday. He thinks he's done with the real world --- until it shows up on his doorstep. One of them is keeping a secret, and the other is living a lie. But can the promise they once made to walk all 184 miles of the Thames Path help them find their way back to the truth --- and to their friendship?
Lynette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre. For more than a decade, she’s been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, working to put their lives back together. Then one woman misses a meeting, and their worst fears are realized --- someone knows about the group and is determined to rip their lives apart again, piece by piece. But the thing about final girls is that no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night or how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.
When Ben Stephens lands a huge ad campaign featuring movie star Anna Gardiner, it’s hard to keep it purely professional. Anna is not just gorgeous and sexy, she’s also down to earth and considerate, and he can’t help flirting a little. Anna Gardiner is on a mission: to make herself a household name, and this ad campaign will be a great distraction while she waits to hear if she’s booked her next movie. However, she didn’t expect Ben Stephens to be her biggest distraction. Their light-hearted banter takes a turn for the serious when Ben helps Anna in a family emergency, and they reveal truths about themselves to each other, truths they’ve barely shared with those closest to them.
Before he was an Army Ranger who came home to become Tibbehah County Sheriff and take down a corrupt system, Quinn Colson was a kid who got into a lot of trouble. So when juvenile delinquent TJ Byrd insists that she doesn’t know who killed her mother --- an unreliable addict who has disappeared --- Quinn is inclined to believe her. But no one else does. When she senses she’s about to take the fall for her mother’s murder, TJ, her boyfriend, her best friend and her nine-year-old brother go on the run. As Quinn’s friend and former deputy, U.S. Marshal Lillie Virgil, tracks the kids across a trail of burglaries, stolen cars and even a kidnapping, intent on bringing TJ to justice, Quinn sets out to find the truth back in Tibbehah.
A Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives HELL OF A BOOK and is the scaffolding of something much larger and urgent. Jason Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. While this book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art and money, it’s also about the nation’s reckoning with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news. And with what it can mean to be Black in America. Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind?
Ruby Heartwood, a traveling psychic, has always lived a life on the move. She needs no one, and no one needs her. Until one night, when she is camped by the side of the road, a fierce thunder and lightning storm erupts. In the middle of the downpour, she hears a distinct voice telling her to "let me in." In jumps a little black and white dog, and to Ruby's astonishment, she can hear the dog's thoughts. Has she been struck by lightning? Did the storm do this? Is she losing her mind? It turns out that Ruby can hear many dogs' thoughts. She decides to set up semi-permanent residency in the town of Harmony Farms until she can sort out what is going on and who the dog, Hitch, belongs to. But some people in Harmony Farms don't want her there. And it seems that events keep preventing Ruby from leaving.
The year is 1969, and the Bayleen Island Folk Fest is abuzz with one name: Jesse Reid. Jesse’s intricate guitar riffs and supple baritone are poised to tip from fame to legend with this one headlining performance. That is, until his motorcycle crashes on the way to the show. Jane Quinn and her bandmates are asked to play in his place at the festival, and Jane delivers the performance of a lifetime. Jesse stays on the island to recover and strikes up a friendship with Jane, which soon turns into a passionate love affair. When Jane stumbles on the dark secret beneath Jesse’s music, she must reckon with the shadows of her own past. What follows is the birth of one of the most iconic albums of all time.
Luke Nolan has led the Hope congregation for more than a decade, while his wife and daughters have patiently upheld what it means to live righteously. Made famous by a viral sermon on purity co-written with his eldest daughter, Abigail, Luke is a spellbinding speaker. But his younger daughter, Caroline, has begun to notice the cracks in their comfortable life. She is certain that her perfect, pristine sister is about to marry the wrong man --- and Caroline has slid into sin with a boy she’s known her entire life, wondering why God would care so much about her virginity anyway. When it comes to light, five weeks before Abigail’s wedding, that Luke has been lying to his family, the entire Nolan clan falls into a tailspin.
Long Island homicide detective Maggie D'arcy and her teenage daughter, Lilly, are still recovering from the events of last fall when a strange new case demands Maggie's attention. The body of an unidentified Irish national turns up in a wealthy Long Island beach community. With little to go on but the scars on his back, Maggie once again teams up with Garda detectives in Ireland to find out who the man was and what he was doing on Long Island. As she gets closer to the truth about the murder, what she learns leads her back to her home turf and into range of a dangerous and determined killer who will do anything to keep the victim's story hidden forever.
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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.
December's Books on Screen roundup includes the films The Housemaid, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw, 100 Nights of Hero,The Chronology of Water and Not Without Hope; the series premiere of Paramount+'s "Little Disasters"; the season premiere of "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" on Disney+ and Hulu; the season finales of HBO's "IT: Welcome to Derry" and Apple TV+'s "Down Cemetery Road"; the midseason finales of "Tracker" and "Watson" on CBS; and the DVD/Blu-ray releases of Karen Kingsbury's The Christmas Ring and Black Phone 2.