Adult

Isabelle and Jean-Claude undertake an airship expedition to recover a fabled treasure and claim a hitherto undiscovered craton for l'Empire Celeste. But Isabelle, resulting from a previous attack that tried to subsume her body and soul, suffers from increasingly disturbing and disruptive hallucinations. Disasters are compounded when the ship is sabotaged by an enemy agent, and Jean-Claude is separated from the expedition. In a race against time, Isabelle must figure out how to ward off her ailment before it destroys her and reunite with Jean-Claude to seek the fabled treasure as ancient secrets and a royal conspiracy threaten to undo the entire realm.

The new season of Rachel Krall's true-crime podcast has brought her to a small town being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. A local golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season 3 a success, Rachel throws herself into her investigation --- but she keeps receiving mysterious letters. Officially, Jenny Stills tragically drowned, but the letters insist she was murdered. The past and present start to collide as Rachel uncovers startling connections between the two cases --- and a revelation that will change the course of the trial and the lives of everyone involved.

Living through World War II, working in a Paris bookstore with her young daughter, Vivi, and fighting for her life, Charlotte is no victim. She is a survivor. But can she survive the next chapter of her life? Alternating between wartime Paris and 1950s New York publishing, Ellen Feldman's PARIS NEVER LEAVES YOU is an extraordinary story of resilience, love and impossible choices, exploring how survival never comes without a cost.

A pair of medical examiners find themselves battling a dead man who won’t stay dead. In a Midwestern trailer park, a Black teenage girl and a Muslim immigrant battle newly risen friends and family. On a U.S. aircraft carrier, living sailors hide from dead ones, while a fanatic makes a new religion out of death. At a cable news station, a surviving anchor keeps broadcasting while his undead colleagues try to devour him. In D.C., an autistic federal employee charts the outbreak, preserving data for a future that may never come. Everywhere, people are targeted by both the living and the dead. We think we know how this story ends. We. Are. Wrong.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Side by side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath --- but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her. Sealed in the gothic gloom of the Emperor's Mithraeum with three unfriendly teachers, hunted by the mad ghost of a murdered planet, Harrow must confront two unwelcome questions: Is somebody trying to kill her? And if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?

On a beautiful October evening, New York City's iconic Guggenheim Museum is closed for a tech company's private gala. Until an explosion rocks the night, instantly killing 702 people, including every single attendee --- yet the damage to the building itself was minimal. An explosion of that precision was no accident. In response, the FBI mobilizes its entire team, but the sheer number of victims strains their resources. Dr. Lucas Page is uniquely gifted for the task at hand --- he can visualize a crime scene as if he was a bystander and can break down any set of data at a glance. Even though Page wants nothing to do with the FBI, with his city under attack and his family at risk, he steps in to find a killer in a haystack before they strike again.

We all have our reasons for being who we are. But what if being someone else could get you what you want? After a devastating betrayal, a young woman sets off on an obsessive path to justice, no matter what dark family secrets are revealed. What she doesn't know is that she isn't the only one plotting her revenge. An affluent daughter of privilege. A glamorous manipulative wannabe. A determined reporter, in too deep. A grieving widow who must choose her new reality. Who will be the first to lie? And when the stakes are life and death, do a few lies really matter?

Nils Shapiro accepts what appears to be an easy, lucrative job: find out if Beverly Mayer’s grandson is foolishly throwing away his trust fund in Hollywood, especially now, in the wake of his fiancée’s tragic death. However, that easy job becomes much more complicated once Nils arrives in Los Angeles. He quickly suspects that Ebben Mayer’s fiancée was murdered, and that Ebben himself may have been the target. As Nils moves into Ebben’s inner circle, he discovers that everyone in Ebben’s professional life seems to have dubious motives at best. With Nils' friend Jameson White, who has come to Los Angeles to deal with demons of his own, acting as Ebben’s bodyguard, Nils sets out to find a killer before it’s too late.

The citizens of Plainfield, Texas, have had it with the broke-down United States. So they vote to secede, rename themselves America in memory of their former country, and happily set themselves up to receive tourists from their closest neighbor: America. Couldn’t happen? Well, it might, and so it goes in the 13 stories in Matthew Baker’s WHY VISIT AMERICA. The book opens with a seemingly traditional story in which the speculative element is extremely minimal --- the narrator has a job that doesn’t actually exist --- a story that wouldn’t seem much out of place in a collection of literary realism. From there the stories get progressively stranger.

There are rules for murder mysteries. There must be a victim. A suspect. A detective. Grant McAllister, an author of crime fiction and professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked them all out, publishing seven perfect detective stories to demonstrate the rules of murder. But that was 30 years ago. Now Grant lives in seclusion on a remote Mediterranean island --- until Julia Hart, a sharp, ambitious editor, knocks on his door. His early work is being republished, and together the two of them must revisit those old stories. But as she reads the stories, Julia is unsettled to realize that there are parts that don't make sense. Intricate clues seem to reference a real murder --- one that's remained unsolved for 30 years. If Julia wants answers, she must triumph in a battle of wits with a dangerously clever adversary.