Adult

Rudy never expected to be a widower at 54 years old. Now, 10 months after the untimely death of his beloved wife, he’s still struggling with how to move on from the overwhelming tragedy --- but at least his new job is helping. After being downsized from his finance position, Rudy turned to his first love: the piano. As the piano player at Nordstrom, Rudy finds immense joy in bringing a little music into the world. And it doesn’t hurt that Sasha, the men’s watch clerk who is finally divorcing her no-good husband, finds time to join him at the bench every now and then. Just when Rudy and Sasha’s relationship begins to deepen, the police reveal a shocking update about Rudy’s wife’s untimely death, and now they want a second look at him, too.

On the outskirts of North Carolina’s Outer Banks sits the Paradise, an apartment complex where renters never stay long enough to call the place “home.” It’s ideal for Sara Lennox, who moved there to escape a complicated past and rebuild a new life for herself under the radar. But Sara cannot help but notice the family next door, especially 12-year-old Cassie and five-year-old Boon. She hears rumors and whispers of a recent tragedy slowly tearing them apart. When a raging storm slams the coastal community, Sara makes a quick, bold decision: rescue Cassie and Boon from the storm and their broken home --- without telling a soul. But this seemingly noble act is not without consequences, some of which are lethal.

Tommy Jump is an out-of-work stage actor approached by the FBI with the role of a lifetime: Go undercover at a federal prison, impersonate a convicted felon, and befriend a fellow inmate --- a disgraced banker named Mitchell Dupree, who knows the location of documents that can be used to bring down a ruthless drug cartel…if only he’d tell the FBI where they are. Using a false name and backstory, Tommy enters the low-security prison and begins the process of befriending Dupree. But he soon realizes he’s underestimated the enormity of his task and the terrifying reach of the cartel. The FBI isn’t the only one looking for the documents, and if Tommy doesn’t play his role to perfection, it just may be his last act.

In the quiet haven of Clearing, Oregon, four neighbors find their lives upended when they begin to see themselves in parallel realities. At first the visions are relatively benign, but they grow increasingly disturbing --- and, in some cases, frightening. When a natural disaster threatens Clearing, it becomes obvious that the visions were not what they first seemed and that the town will never be the same.

Middle-aged and deeply depressed, Jim arrives in California from Alaska and surrenders himself to the care of his brother Gary, who intends to watch over him. Swinging unpredictably from manic highs to extreme lows, Jim wanders ghost-like through the remains of his old life attempting to find meaning in his tattered relationships with family and friends. As sessions with his therapist become increasingly combative and his connections to others seem ever more tenuous, Jim is propelled forward by his thoughts, which have the potential to lead him, despairingly, to his end.

Emily Apell arrives in Justin McKinnon’s renowned research lab with the single-minded goal of making a breakthrough discovery. But a colleague in the lab, Aeden Doherty, has been working on a similar topic, and his findings threaten to compete with her research. To Emily’s surprise, her rational mind is unsettled by Aeden. And when they end up working together, their animosity turns to physical passion, followed by love. Emily eventually allows herself to envision a future with Aeden, but when he decides to leave the lab, it becomes clear to her that she must make a choice. It is only years later, when she is about to receive a prestigious award for the work they did together, that Emily is able to unravel everything that happened between them.

When Chelsea, the ex-wife of Harold Slow Horse, joins a "new thought" organization called Kanati, Scottsdale private eye Lena Jones begins to investigate. She soon learns that two communes have sprung up nearby in the Arizona desert. The participants at EarthWay follow a rigorous dietary regime that could threaten the health of its back-to-the-land inhabitants, while the more pleasure-loving folk at Kanati are dining on sumptuous French cuisine. After finding an emaciated woman's body in the desert, Lena's memory is jolted back to that horrible night when her father and younger brother were among those murdered by a cult leader named Abraham, who then vanished. Lena begins to wonder if either EarthWay or Kanati could be linked to that night, and to her own near-death.

Lured by the promise of a rare and elusive butterfly, the intrepid Veronica Speedwell is persuaded by Lord Templeton-Vane, the brother of her colleague Stoker, to pose as his fiancée at a house party on a Cornish isle owned by his oldest friend, Malcolm Romilly. But Veronica soon learns that one question hangs over the party: What happened to Rosamund? Three years ago, Malcolm’s bride vanished on their wedding day, and no trace of her has ever been found. Now those who were closest to her have gathered, each a possible suspect in her disappearance. Determined to discover Rosamund’s fate, Veronica and Stoker match wits with a murderer who already has struck once and will not hesitate to kill again.

THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS tells the story of the first and greatest visionary of the print age, a man who saw how the explosive expansion of knowledge and information generated by the advent of the printing press would entirely change the landscape of thought and society. He also happened to be Christopher Columbus’ illegitimate son. At the peak of the Age of Exploration, while his father sailed across the ocean to explore the boundaries of the known world, Hernando Colón sought to surpass Columbus’ achievements by building a library that would encompass the world and include “all books, in all languages and on all subjects.”

THE BIRD KING tells the story of Fatima, a concubine in the royal court of Granada, the last emirate of Muslim Spain, and her dearest friend Hassan, the palace mapmaker. Hassan has a secret --- he can draw maps of places he’s never seen and bend the shape of reality. When representatives of the newly formed Spanish monarchy arrive to negotiate the sultan’s surrender, Fatima befriends one of the women, not realizing that she will see Hassan’s gift as sorcery and a threat to Christian Spanish rule. With their freedoms at stake, what will Fatima risk to save Hassan and escape the palace walls?