Adult

Moscow has been struck by disaster. Its people are searching for answers --- and for someone to blame. Vasilisa Petrovna finds herself alone, beset on all sides. The Grand Prince is in a rage, choosing allies that will lead him on a path to war and ruin. A wicked demon returns, stronger than ever and determined to spread chaos. Caught at the center of the conflict is Vasya, who finds the fate of two worlds resting on her shoulders. Her destiny uncertain, Vasya will uncover surprising truths about herself and her history as she desperately tries to save Russia, the winter-king Morozko and the magical world she treasures. But she may not be able to save them all.

As a young man, Paul McGrath rebelled against his pacifist father by becoming a standout Army recruit and the star of his military intelligence unit. But lingering regrets about their relationship make him return home, only to find his father dead, seemingly murdered. When the case ends in a mistrial, something doesn’t smell right to McGrath. So he puts his arsenal of skills to work to find out just how corrupt the legal system is. And to keep digging, he gets a job at the courthouse as a janitor. While McGrath knows that nothing he discovers can undo his past wrongs or save his father, he finds his new calling brings him something else: the chance to right current wrongs and save others --- that is, if the powerful and corrupt don’t kill him first.

Vicki learns from the police that her ex-husband, David, has gone missing. She insists she last saw him years ago when they divorced, but the police clearly don't believe her. And her memory is hardly reliable. Meanwhile, Scarlet is arrested for dealing drugs, and her eight-year-old daughter, Scarlet, is forced into years of foster care --- an experience that will shape the rest of her life. David's new wife, Tanya, is the one who reported him missing, but what really happened on the night of David's disappearance? And how can Vicki prove her innocence, when she's not even sure of it herself? The answer lies in the connection among these four women --- and the one person they can't escape.

Four exceptional doctors are chosen for an honor and a unique project: to work with their counterparts in Paris in a mass-casualty training program. As professionals, they will gain invaluable knowledge from the program. As ordinary men and women, they will find that the City of Light opens up incredible new possibilities, exhilarating, enticing and frightening. When an unspeakable act of mass violence galvanizes them into action, their temporary life in Paris becomes a stark turning point: a time to face harder choices than they have ever made before --- with consequences that will last a lifetime.

The year is 1921, and "Nobody" Alice James has just arrived in Oregon with a bullet wound, a lifetime's experience battling the New York Mafia, and $50,000 in illicit cash. She befriends Max, a black Pullman porter who reminds her achingly of home and who saves Alice by leading her to the Paragon Hotel. But her unlikely sanctuary turns out to be an all-black hotel in a Jim Crow city, and its lodgers seem unduly terrified of a white woman on the premises. The Ku Klux Klan has arrived in Portland in fearful numbers --- burning crosses, electing officials, infiltrating newspapers and brutalizing blacks. And only Alice and her new Paragon "family" are searching for a missing mulatto child who has mysteriously vanished into the woods. To untangle the web of lies and misdeeds around her, Alice will have to answer for her own past, too.

Iraq war veteran Peter Ash heads to Memphis to help Wanda Wyatt, a photographer and war correspondent, who's been receiving peculiar threats. Upon his arrival, however, he finds that the situation has gone downhill fast --- someone has just driven a dump truck into Wanda's living room. But neither Wanda nor Peter can figure out why. At the same time, a young homeless street musician finds himself roped into a plan to rob a jewelry store. The heist doesn't go as planned, and the young man finds himself holding a sack full of Rolexes and running for his life. Peter likes the skinny kid's smarts and attitude, but he soon discovers that the desperate musician is in far worse trouble than he knows. And Wanda's troubles are only beginning.

Journalist Charlie Cates has always believed in facts, which is why she has never truly accepted the supernatural visions that guide her to children in danger. After her work on a high-profile missing-child case brings unwanted fame, she reluctantly flees to the lush Big Island of Hawaii with her best friend, Rae. Determined to avoid her disturbing visions, Charlie begins writing what seems to be a harmless interview of a prominent volcanologist, Victor Nakagawa. But her hopes for a peaceful vacation are soon dashed by haunting dreams of a local girl who went missing six weeks earlier. In order to find the teenager and stop a dangerous predator from striking again, Charlie is forced to embrace the gift she has always tried to conceal.

Samanta Schweblin haunts and mesmerizes in this extraordinary collection featuring women on the edge, men turned upside down, the natural world at odds with reality. We think life is one way, but often it’s not --- our expectations for how people act, love and fear can all be upended. Each character in MOUTHFUL OF BIRDS must contend with the unexpected, whether a family coming apart at the seams or a child transforming or a ghostly hellscape or a murder. Schweblin’s stories have the feel of a sleepless night, where every shadow and bump in the dark take on huge implications, leaving your pulse racing, and the line between the real and the strange blurs.

Hot on the trail of a North Korean looking to sell sensitive US intelligence to the Syrian regime, Pike Logan and the Taskforce stumble upon something much graver: the sale of a lethal substance called Red Mercury. Unbeknownst to the Taskforce, the Syrians plan to use the weapon of mass destruction against American and Kurdish forces, and blame the attack on terrorists, causing western nations to reassess their participation in the murky cauldron of the Syrian civil war. Meanwhile, North Korea has its own devastating agenda: a double-cross that will dwarf the attack in Syria even as it lays the blame on the Syrian government. As the Taskforce begins to unravel the plot, a young refugee unwittingly holds the key to the conspiracy.

Juliana Brody, a judge in the Superior Court of Massachusetts, is rumored to be in consideration for the federal circuit, maybe someday the highest court in the land. At a conference in a Chicago hotel, she meets a gentle, vulnerable man and has an unforgettable night with him. But back home in Boston, Juliana realizes that this was no random encounter. The man from Chicago proves to have an integral role in a sex-discrimination case she's presiding over. Juliana discovers that she's been entrapped, her night of infidelity captured on video. It soon becomes clear that personal humiliation, even the possible destruction of her career, are the least of her concerns, as her own life and the lives of her family are put in mortal jeopardy.