Adult

It’s 1993, and Rory Ramos works as a ranch hand at the stable her stepfather manages in Topanga Canyon, California, a dry, dusty place reliant on horses and hierarchies. There she rides for the rich clientele, including twins June and Wade Fisk. While Rory draws the interest of out-and-proud June, she’s more intrigued by Vivian Price, the beautiful girl with the movie-star father who lives down the hill. Rory keeps largely separate from the likes of the Prices --- but, perched on her bedroom windowsill, she steals glimpses of Vivian swimming in her pool nearly every night. After Rory’s stepfather is involved in a tragic car accident, the lives of Rory, June and Vivian become inextricably bound together.

Laura has arrived in New York City’s East Village in the hopes of recording her first album. A songwriter with a one-of-a-kind talent, she’s just beginning to book gigs with her beautiful best friend when she falls hard for a troubled but magnetic musician whose star is on the rise. Their time together is stormy and short-lived, but will reverberate for the rest of Laura’s life. Fifteen years later, Laura’s teenage daughter is asking questions about her father, questions that Laura does not want to answer. Laura has taken pains to close the door on what was and what might have been. But neither her best friend, now a famous musician who relies on Laura’s songwriting skills, nor her depressed and searching daughter will let her give up on her dreams.

Mitchell Fisher has said a firm goodbye to romance. He relishes his job cutting off the padlocks that couples fasten to his hometown’s famous “love story” bridge. Only his young daughter, Poppy, knows that behind his prickly veneer, Mitchell is deeply lonely --- and he still grieves the loss of Poppy’s mother. Then one hot summer’s day, everything changes when Mitchell bravely rescues a woman who falls from the bridge into the river. He’s surprised to feel an unexpected connection to her, but then she disappears. Desperate to find the mysterious woman, Mitchell teams up with her spirited sister, Liza, to see if she’s left any clues behind. There’s just one --- a secret message on the padlock she left on love story bridge.

Deep in the wilds of Siberia, a woman is on the run, pursued by a man harboring secrets --- a man intent on killing her. A traitorous CIA officer has found refuge with the Russian mafia with designs on ensuring that a certain former Navy SEAL sniper is put in the ground. Half a world away, James Reece is recovering from brain surgery in the Montana wilderness, slowly putting his life back together with the help of investigative journalist Katie Buranek and his longtime friend and SEAL teammate Raife Hastings. Unbeknownst to them, the Russian mafia has set their sights on Reece in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

On a cold, rainy morning, finance journalist Ally Linden arrives soaked to the bone at her Manhattan office, only to find that she’s forgotten her keycard. When her boss shows, he’s shocked to see her --- because she hasn’t worked there in five years. Ally knows her name, but is having trouble coming up with much beyond that. Diagnosed as having experienced a dissociative state, she starts to wonder if it may have been triggered by something she saw. It soon becomes clear that someone wants to prevent her from learning where the past 48 hours have gone. In order to uncover the truth, Ally must dig deep into the secrets of her past --- and outsmart the person who seems determined to silence her.

David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist who would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But his specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. In an instant, his life’s work was shattered. He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world. When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a fool. But what she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality and the world beneath her feet.

Iris Maynard lost her husband in World War II, her daughter to illness and, finally, her reason to live. Walled off from the world for decades behind the towering fence surrounding her home, Iris has built a new family…of flowers. Iris propagates her own daylilies and roses while tending to a garden filled with the heirloom starts that keep the memories of her loved ones alive. When Abby Peterson moves next door with her family --- a husband traumatized by his service in the Iraq War and a young daughter searching for stability --- Iris is reluctantly yet inevitably drawn into her boisterous neighbor’s life, where, united by loss and a love of flowers, she and Abby tentatively unearth their secrets, and help each other discover how much life they have yet to live.

For the crime of stealing bread, 14-year-old May receives a life sentence: she must become a Sin Eater --- a shunned woman, brutally marked, whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven. Orphaned and friendless, apprenticed to an older Sin Eater who cannot speak to her, May must make her way in a dangerous and cruel world she barely understands. When a deer heart appears on the coffin of a royal governess who did not confess to the dreadful sin it represents, the older Sin Eater refuses to eat it. She is taken to prison, tortured and killed. To avenge her death, May must find out who placed the deer heart on the coffin and why.

London, 1754. Six years after leaving her illegitimate newborn at the Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright returns to reclaim the daughter she has never known. Dreading the worst, that she has died in care, she is astonished to discover that someone pretending to be Bess has already claimed her. Her life is turned upside down as she tries to find out who has taken her little girl --- and why. Less than a mile from Bess’ poor lodgings, in a quiet Georgian townhouse, lives Alexandra, a reclusive young widow. When a close friend persuades her to hire a nursemaid to help care for her daughter, she is hesitant to welcome someone new into her home. But her past is threatening to catch up with her and tear her carefully constructed world apart.

Chicago may be the city of broad shoulders, but its political law is “Pay to Play.” Money changes hands in the middle of the night, and by morning, buildings and parks are replaced by billion-dollar projects. Chicago PI V.I. Warshawski gets pulled into one of these clandestine deals through her impetuous goddaughter, Bernie Fouchard. Bernie tries to rescue Lydia Zamir, a famed singer-songwriter now living on the streets; Zamir’s life fell apart when her lover was murdered next to her in a mass shooting at an outdoor concert. Not only does Bernie plunge her and V.I. headlong into the path of some ruthless developers, they lead to the murder of the young man Bernie is dating.