One night, three women go to the theater to see a play. Wildfires are burning in the hills outside, but inside the theater it is time for the performance to take over. Margot is a successful, flinty professor on the cusp of retirement, distracted by her fraught relationship with her adult son and her ailing husband. After a traumatic past, Ivy is now a philanthropist with a seemingly perfect life. Summer is a young drama student, an usher at the theater, and frantically worried for her girlfriend whose parents live in the fire zone. While the performance unfolds on stage, so does the compelling trajectory that will bring these three women together, changing them all.
When Savannah history professor Everly Winthrop is asked to guest-curate a new museum collection focusing on artifacts recovered from the steamship Pulaski, she's shocked. The ship sank after a boiler explosion in 1838, and the wreckage was just discovered, 180 years later. Everly's research leads her to the astounding history of a family of 11 who boarded the Pulaski together, and the extraordinary stories of two women from this family: a known survivor, Augusta Longstreet, and her niece, Lilly Forsyth, who was never found, along with her child. These aristocratic women were part of Savannah's society, but when the ship exploded, each was faced with difficult and heartbreaking decisions.
Emily has come a long way since she lost her two passions 15 years ago: music and Rob. She's a psychologist at NYU who helps troubled college students like the one she once was. Together with her caring doctor husband, Ezra, she has a beautiful life. They're happy. They hope to start a family. But when a tragic event in Emily's present too closely echoes her past, and parts of her story that she'd hoped never to share come to light, her perfect life is suddenly upturned. Then Emily hears a song on the radio about the woman who got away. The melody and voice are hauntingly familiar. Could it be? As Emily's past passions come roaring back into her life, she'll find herself asking: Who is she meant to be? Who is she meant to love?
In the early days of World War II, the infamous German Luftwaffe embarks upon an expedition to Antarctica, hoping to set up a military base to support their goal of world domination. Though the military outpost never comes to fruition, what the Nazis find on the icy continent indeed proves dangerous...and will have implications far into the future. In the present day, Kurt Austin and his assistant, Joe Zavala, embark for the freezing edge of the world after a former NUMA colleague disappears in Antarctica. While there, they discover a photo of the Luftwaffe expedition of 1939, and are drawn into a decades-old conspiracy. Even as they confront perilous waters and frigid temperatures, they also are up against a terrifying man-made weapon --- a fast-growing ice that could usher in a new Ice Age.
As the newest member of the Curiosity Club --- an elite society of brilliant, intrepid women --- Veronica Speedwell is excited to put her many skills to good use. As she assembles a memorial exhibition for pioneering mountain climber Alice Baker-Greene, Veronica discovers evidence that the recent death was not a tragic climbing accident but murder. She and her natural historian beau, Stoker, tell the patron of the exhibit, Princess Gisela of Alpenwald, of their findings. With Europe on the verge of war, Gisela's chancellor, Count von Rechstein, does not want to make waves --- and before Veronica and Stoker can figure out their next move, the princess disappears.
Broad daylight on an Austin, Texas, street, and DIA operative Matt Drake is fighting for his life against a highly trained team of assassins. Who are they? Why do they want him dead? How will he protect those closest to him? The answers will take him into some of the most dangerous spots in the Middle East and will put him in the clutches of an old foe known simply as the Devil. It's a world of double crosses, with no boundaries between the guilty and the innocent. It will take all of Drake's wiles to get out alive.
The governor of Wyoming gives Joe Pickett the thankless assignment of taking a tech baron on an elk-hunting trip. Unbeknownst to them, as they trek farther into the wilderness, a manhunter is hot on their heels. Finding himself without a weapon, a horse or a way to communicate, Joe must rely on his wits and his knowledge of the outdoors to protect himself and his charge. Meanwhile, when Joe's closest friend, Nate Romanowski, and his own daughter Sheridan learn of the threat to his life, they follow him into the woods to try and rescue him before it's too late.
Single mom Jess Davis is a data and statistics wizard, but no amount of number crunching can convince her to step back into the dating world. But then she hears about GeneticAlly, a buzzy new DNA-based matchmaking company that is predicted to change dating forever. Her test shows an unheard-of 98% compatibility with another subject in the database: GeneticAlly’s founder, Dr. River Peña. This stuck-up, stubborn man is without a doubt not her soulmate. But GeneticAlly has a proposition: Get to know him and we’ll pay you. Jess is in no position to turn it down, despite her skepticism about the project and her dislike for River. However, she slowly begins to realize that there might be more to the scientist --- and the science behind a soulmate --- than she thought.
Izumi Tanaka has never really felt like she fit in --- it isn’t easy being Japanese American in her small, mostly white, northern California town. But then she discovers a clue to her previously unknown father’s identity…and he’s none other than the Crown Prince of Japan. In a whirlwind, Izumi travels to Japan to meet the father she never knew and discover the country she always dreamed of. But being a princess isn’t all ball gowns and tiaras. There are conniving cousins, a hungry press, a scowling but handsome bodyguard who just might be her soulmate, and thousands of years of tradition and customs to learn practically overnight. She soon finds herself caught between worlds, and between versions of herself. Will Izumi crumble under the weight of the crown, or will she live out her fairy tale, happily ever after?
In 2017, inspired in part by Henry James’ THE TURN OF THE SCREW, the acclaimed English novelist John Lanchester published a ghost story in The New Yorker. "Signal," an eerie story of contemporary life and the perils of technology, was a sensation among readers --- and since then Lanchester has written several more. REALITY AND OTHER STORIES gathers the best of these, taking readers to an uncanny world familiar to fans of “The Twilight Zone” or “Black Mirror.” Household gizmos with a mind of their own. Mysterious cell phone calls from unknown numbers. Reality TV shows and the creeping suspicion that none of this is real.
Tell us about the books you’ve finished reading with your comments and a rating of 1 to 5 stars. During the contest period from December 5th to December 19th at noon ET, three lucky readers each will be randomly chosen to win a copy of THE AWARD by Matthew Pearl and THE HEIR APPARENT by Rebecca Armitage.
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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.