Adult

Shortly after her 25th birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames, which is worth millions. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well --- and she is on a collision course to meet them. Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy 10-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone. But where?

Three years before David Bowie died, he shared a list of 100 books that changed his life. His choices span fiction and nonfiction, literary and irreverent, and include timeless classics alongside eyebrow-raising obscurities. In 100 short essays, music journalist John O’Connell studies each book on Bowie’s list and contextualizes it in the artist’s life and work. How did the power imbued in a single suit of armor in THE ILIAD impact a man who loved costumes, shifting identity and the siren song of the alter-ego? How did the poems of T.S. Eliot and Frank O’Hara, the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov and Anthony Burgess, and the groundbreaking politics of James Baldwin influence Bowie’s lyrics, sound and artistic outlook? How did the 100 books on this list influence one of the most influential artists of a generation?

Iconic Moscow investigator Arkady Renko hasn’t seen his part-time lover, journalist Tatiana Petrovna, since she left on assignment over a month ago. Renko slowly learns that Tatiana has been profiling the rise of political dissident Mikhail Kuznetsov, a golden boy of modern oil wealth and the first to pose a true threat to Putin’s rule in over a decade. Though Kuznetsov seems like the perfect candidate to take on the corruption in Russian politics, his reputation becomes clouded when Boris Benz, his business partner and best friend, turns up dead. In a land of shamans and brutally cold nights, oligarchs wealthy on northern oil, and sea monsters that are said to prowl the deepest lake in the world, Renko needs all his wits about him to get Tatiana out alive.

FBI Agent Atlee Pine's life was never the same after her twin sister, Mercy, was kidnapped --- and likely killed --- 30 years ago. After a lifetime of torturous uncertainty, Atlee's unresolved anger finally gets the better of her on the job, and she finds she has to deal with the demons of her past if she wants to remain with the FBI. Atlee and her assistant, Carol Blum, head back to Atlee's rural hometown in Georgia to see what they can uncover about the traumatic night Mercy was taken and Pine was almost killed. But soon after Atlee begins her investigation, a local woman is found ritualistically murdered, her face covered with a wedding veil --- and the first killing is quickly followed by a second bizarre murder.

When investigative journalist Gina Kane receives an email from a “CRyan” describing her “terrible experience” while working at REL, a high-profile television news network, Gina knows she has to pursue the story. But when Ryan goes silent, Gina is shocked to discover the young woman has died tragically in a jet ski accident. Meanwhile, several female employees have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct. REL counsel Michael Carter approaches the CEO, offering to persuade the victims to accept settlements in exchange for their silence. Was Ryan’s death truly an accident? And when another accuser turns up dead, Gina realizes someone will go to depraved lengths to keep the story from seeing the light.

The year is 1975. Elle Sheen --- a single mother who is supporting herself and her six-year-old African-American son, Dylan, as a waitress at the Noel Street Diner --- isn’t sure what to make of William Smith when his appearance creates a stir in the small town of Mistletoe, Utah. As their lives unexpectedly entwine, Elle learns that William, a recently returned Vietnam POW, not only is fighting demons from his past, but may also have the answer to her own secret pain --- a revelation that culminates in a remarkable act of love and forgiveness.

South Africa in the 1880s. A young and naive English doctor by the name of William Abbey witnesses the lynching of a local boy by the white colonists. As the child dies, his mother curses William. William begins to understand what the curse means when the shadow of the dead boy starts following him across the world. It never stops, never rests. It can cross oceans and mountains. And if it catches him, the person he loves most in the world will die.

Boady Sanden is the new kid at St. Ignatius High School. When Thomas Elgin moves in across the road, Boady's life begins to twist and turn. Coming to know the Elgins, a black family, forces Boady to rethink his understanding of the world he's taken for granted. Secrets hidden in plain sight begin to unfold, the biggest of which is the disappearance of Lida Poe, the African-American woman who keeps the books at the local plastics factory. Word has it that Ms. Poe left town, along with a hundred thousand dollars of company money. As the mystery of her fate plays out, Boady begins to see the stark lines of race and class that both bind and divide this small town --- and he will be forced to choose sides.

Seventeen years after the fall of the Third Reich, Max Weill has never forgotten the atrocities he saw as a prisoner at Auschwitz --- nor the face of Dr. Otto Schramm, a camp doctor who worked with Mengele on appalling experiments and who sent Max’s family to the gas chambers. As the war came to a close, Schramm was one of the many high-ranking former Nazi officers who managed to escape Germany for new lives in South America, where leaders like Argentina’s Juan Perón gave them safe harbor and new identities. With his life nearing its end, Max asks his nephew Aaron Wiley --- an American CIA desk analyst --- to complete the task Max never could: to track down Otto in Argentina, capture him and bring him back to Germany to stand trial.