Adult

The newspaper refers to the body only as Victim 2117 --- the 2,117th refugee to die in the Mediterranean Sea. But to three people, the unnamed victim is so much more, and the death sets off a chain of events that throws Department Q, Copenhagen’s cold cases division led by Detective Carl Mørck, into a deeply dangerous --- and deeply personal --- case. A case that not only reveals dark secrets about the past, but has deadly implications for the future.

Big Burr, Kansas, is the kind of place where everyone seems to know everyone, and everyone shares the same values --- or keeps their opinions to themselves. But when a national nonprofit labels Big Burr "the most homophobic town in the US" and sends in a task force of queer volunteers as an experiment --- they'll live and work in the community for two years in an attempt to broaden hearts and minds --- no one is truly prepared for what will ensue. As tensions roil the town, cratering relationships and forcing closely guarded secrets into the light, everyone must consider what it really means to belong.

Lydia and Freddie. Freddie and Lydia. They’d been together for more than a decade, and Lydia thought their love was indestructible. But she was wrong. On Lydia’s 28th birthday, Freddie died in a car accident. So now it’s just Lydia, and all she wants is to hide indoors and sob until her eyes fall out. But Lydia knows that Freddie would want her to try to live fully, happily, even without him. So, enlisting the help of his best friend, Jonah, and her sister, Elle, she takes her first tentative steps into the world, open to life --- and perhaps even love --- again. But then something inexplicable happens that gives her another chance at her old life with Freddie. A life where none of the tragic events of the past few months have happened.

When Dottoressa Donato calls the Questura to report that a dying patient at the hospice Fatebenefratelli wants to speak to the police, Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, waste no time in responding. “They killed him. It was bad money. I told him no,” Benedetta Toso gasps the words about her recently deceased husband, Vittorio Fadalto. Even though he is not sure she can hear him, Brunetti softly promises that he and Griffoni will look into what initially appears to be a private family tragedy. Piecing together the tangled threads, in time Brunetti comes to realize the perilous meaning in the woman’s accusation and the threat it reveals to the health of the entire region.

Douglas Rigby, attorney-at-law, is bankrupt. He’s just sunk his last $200,000 --- a clandestine “loan” from his last remaining client, former bigshot TV exec Glenn Haskill --- into a cocaine deal gone wrong. The lesson? Never trust anyone else with the dirty work. Desperate to get back on top, Rigby formulates an art forgery scheme involving one of Glenn’s priceless paintings, a victimless crime. But for Rigby to pull this one off, he’ll need to negotiate a whole cast of players with their own agendas, including his wife, his girlfriend, an embittered art forger, Glenn’s resentful nurse, and the man’s money-hungry nephew. One misstep, and it all falls apart. Will he be able to save his skin?

California zookeeper Theodora Bentley is now happily married to Sheriff Joe Rejas. The Gunn Zoo is celebrating the arrival of Poonya, an adorable red panda, who forms a strong bond with Teddy. All appears fairy tale blissful in the small Monterey Bay village of Gunn Landing until Teddy's mother-in-law, mystery writer Colleen Rejas, has discovered through DNA testing that Joe has sired a son he knew nothing about. Eighteen-year-old Dylan Coyle arrives to meet his biological family, and then is arrested for murder. By the end of the book, besides solving the crime, Teddy and Colleen have learned that the term "family" does not always mean blood kin. It often includes those who --- although no blood relationship --- are still held close in our hearts.

When beloved fisherman John Staybrook vanishes in the night, his loss stirs up more than grief. His daughter, Ella, is convinced he's still alive and vows to bring him home. But as she searches the small Massachusetts town, secrets throughout the community begin to bubble to the surface. As the pieces fall into place of what really happened, everyone from the babysitter to the local librarian are swept into a more urgent question: Why would someone go out in the middle of a deadly storm?

When Joe Pickett is asked to join the rescue efforts for the victim of a startling grizzly attack, he reluctantly leaves his district behind. One survivor of the grizzly's rampage tells a bizarre story, but just as Joe begins to suspect the attack is not what it seems, he is brought home by an emergency on his own turf. Someone has targeted a prominent local judge, shooting at him from a seemingly impossible distance. While the judge was not hit, his wife is severely wounded, and it is up to Joe to find answers --- and the shooter. The search for the would-be assassin becomes personal when Joe's best friend, Nate Romanowski --- just as he's adjusting to the arrival of his first child --- falls under suspicion for the crime.

Stalin’s Russia, 1950. Brilliant young artist Pasha Kalmenov is arrested and sent without trial to a forced-labor camp in the Arctic gulag. This is a camp like no other. Although conditions are harsh and degrading, the prisoners are not to be worked to death in a coal mine or on a construction project. Their task is to forge the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. There is a high price to be paid for failing to reach the required standard of perfection --- particularly as the camp commandant has his own secret agenda. When the executions begin, Pasha realizes that only his artistic talent can protect him. But for how long? Worse horrors are to come. If he survives them, will life still be worth living?

Lee Durkee takes readers on a high-stakes cab ride through an unforgettable shift. Meet Lou --- a lapsed novelist, struggling Buddhist and UFO fan --- who drives for a ramshackle taxi company that operates on the outskirts of a north Mississippi college town. With Uber moving into town and his way of life vanishing, his girlfriend moving out, and his archenemy dispatcher suddenly returning to town on the lam, Lou must finish his bedlam shift by aiding and abetting the host of criminal misfits haunting the back seat of his disintegrating Town Car. Lou is forced to decide how much he can take as a driver, and if keeping his job is worth madness and heartbreak.