Adult

When a scream shatters the summer night outside their country house in the Hudson Valley, reformed literary forger Will and his wife Meghan find their daughter Maisie shaken and bloodied, holding a parcel her attacker demanded she present to her father. Inside is a literary rarity the likes of which few have ever handled, and a letter laying out impossible demands regarding its future. After 20 years of living life on the straight and narrow, Will finds himself drawn back to forgery, ensnared in a plot to counterfeit the rarest book in American literature: Edgar Allan Poe’s first, TAMERLANE, of which only a dozen copies are known to have survived. Until now.

Ten years ago as an undergrad, Joan Mason escaped an arsonist’s fire. Now a Philadelphia homicide detective, she is trying to put her traumas to rest. But Elijah Weston, the classmate who torched her house, is out of prison and returning to Missoula. Gut instinct tells Joan he’ll strike again. To stop him, she must return to the past as well --- to face not only the man she fears but also Detective Gideon Bailey, the man she loved and left behind. When a local woman dies tragically in another fire, it can’t be a coincidence. Can it be Elijah? He has a solid alibi for the night of the blaze. Reunited by the tragedy, Joan and Gideon have their doubts. The investigation draws them together, but it also sends them down a dangerous path.

Former spy Charles Jenkins, who survived an undercover Russian operation gone wrong, learns of a woman isolated in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison. If it’s Paulina Ponomayova, the agent who sacrificed her life to save his, Jenkins can’t leave her behind. But there’s no guarantee it’s her. Or proof Paulina is still alive. To find out, Jenkins must return to Russia. Next move: blackmail Viktor Federov, a former Russian officer with his own ax to grind, into helping him infiltrate Lefortovo. The enemy who once pursued Jenkins across three continents is now the only man Jenkins can trust. Every step of the way, they’re hunted by a brutal Russian agent on a killer quest of his own.

Once upon a time, Emily Bennett was part of a middle school clique called the Harpies --- six popular girls who bullied the new girl to her breaking point. The Harpies took a blood oath: never tell a soul what they did to Grace Farmer. Now, 14 years later, it seems karma has caught up to them when one member of that vicious circle commits suicide. But when a second Harpy is discovered dead shortly after, also from an apparent suicide, the deaths start to look suspicious. And when Emily begins seeing a woman who looks a lot like Grace Farmer lurking in the shadows, she is forced to wonder: Is Grace back for revenge? Or is Emily’s guilt driving her mad?

When police investigator Susan Adler is called to the roadside murder of a fellow state trooper, she is tasked with finding the people responsible for the cold-blooded act caught on the trooper’s dashboard cam. She traces the car to a nurse who, along with her elderly patient, has been missing for days. At the old man’s house, she finds disturbing evidence that instantly revives two cold cases involving long-missing children. The investigation takes a chilling turn when people involved with both the nurse and the old man begin to turn up dead, and Susan enlists the help of her friend and forensic investigator Liam Dwyer. Together they must untangle the threads of this ever-more-complicated case --- and stay ahead of whoever is trying to slash their progress.

The problems fracturing the Goss family as Christmas approaches are hardly unique, though perhaps they are handling them a little differently than most people might. But then a true emergency arises, one with the potential to ruin not only Christmas, but everything holding the family together. Is the arrival of a lost puppy yet another in the string of calamities facing them, or could the little canine be just what they all need?

Quantum physicist Matt Bronik is suffering from strange, violent seizures that medical science seems powerless to explain --- much to the consternation of his wife, Brigid. Matt doesn’t think these fits could be related to his research, which he has always described as benign and esoteric. That, it turns out, is not quite true: Matt has been prodding the mysteries of the quantum universe, with terrible repercussions for his health. And perhaps even for humanity as a whole. Then, in the midst of another seizure, Matt disappears. With his life in clear danger, Brigid sets out to find him. Will Matt be killed before she reaches him, or could the physics that endangered him actually be used to save his life?

In TO HOLD UP THE SKY, Cixin Liu takes us across time and space --- from a rural mountain community where elementary students must use physics to prevent an alien invasion; to coal mines in northern China where new technology will either save lives of unleash a fire that will burn for centuries; to a time very much like our own, when superstring computers predict our every move; to 10,000 years in the future, when humanity is finally able to begin anew; to the very collapse of the universe itself. Written between 1999 and 2017 and never before published in English, these stories came into being during decades of major change in China.

Christa Parravani was 40 years old, in a troubled marriage and in bad financial straits when she learned she was pregnant with her third child. Six weeks into the pregnancy, she requested an abortion. And in the weeks and months that followed, nurses and doctors became unavailable to provide Christa with reproductive choice. By the time she understood that she would need to leave West Virginia to obtain a safe, legal abortion, Christa had run out of time. So she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named Keats. And another frightening education began: available healthcare was dangerously inadequate to her newborn son’s needs. Indeed, environmental degradations and poor health care endangered Christa’s older children as well.

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die. Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful is brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up. Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?