Adult

It is 1868, and a 21-year-old Bram Stoker waits in a desolate tower to face an indescribable evil. Armed only with crucifixes, holy water and a rifle, he prays to survive a single night. A sickly child, Bram spent his early days bedridden in his parents' Dublin home, tended to by his caretaker, a young woman named Ellen Crone. When a string of strange deaths occur in a nearby town, Bram and his sister Matilda detect a pattern of bizarre behavior by Ellen --- a mystery that deepens chillingly until Ellen vanishes suddenly from their lives. Years later, Matilda returns from studying in Paris to tell Bram the news that she has seen Ellen --- and that the nightmare they've thought long ended is only beginning.

Over the past decade, Simon Van Booy has been listening to people’s stories. With these personal accounts as a starting point, he has crafted a new collection of short fiction that takes readers into the innermost lives of everyday people. From a family saved from ruin by a mysterious benefactor, to a downtrodden boxer who shows unexpected kindness to a mugger, these tales reveal not only the precarious balance maintained between grief and happiness in our lives, but also how the echoes of personal tragedy can shape us for the better.

Bob Spitz's REAGAN is a richly detailed chronicle of the full arc of Ronald Reagan's epic life --- giving full weight to the Hollywood years, his transition to politics, and his rocky but ultimately successful run as California governor. His iconic presidency, from Iran-Contra to "Tear down this wall!" to an assassination attempt, receives a balanced reckoning in the form of an absorbing, even revelatory narrative.

Detective Renée Ballard is working the night beat and returns to Hollywood Station to find a stranger rifling through old file cabinets. The intruder is retired detective Harry Bosch, working a cold case that has gotten under his skin. Ballard can't let him go through department records, but when he leaves, she looks into the case herself and feels a deep tug of empathy and anger. The murder, unsolved, was of 15-year-old Daisy Clayton, a runaway on the streets of Hollywood who was brutally killed. Now Ballard joins forces with Bosch to find out what happened to Daisy, and to finally bring her killer to justice. But this new partnership is put to the test when the case takes an unexpected and dangerous turn.

A young woman is found strangled in a park, and a male journalist has been killed in the backyard of the Royal Hotel in Copenhagen. Detective Louise Rick is put on the case of the young girl, but very soon becomes entangled in solving the other homicide too when it turns out that her best friend, journalist Camilla Lind, knew the murdered man. Louise tries to keep her friend from getting too involved, but Camilla has never been one to miss out on an interesting story. And this time, Camilla may have gone too far.

My mom would never leave me. This has been Mariah Dunning's motto. So when she glimpses her mother --- who's been missing for the past year --- on the other side of a food court, Mariah's conviction becomes stronger than ever. Or is she losing her mind? When Beth Dunning disappeared without a trace, suspicion for her murder immediately fell upon Mariah's father. Until Mariah stumbles upon two other recent disappearances from Lakehaven. And all three women had the same name: Beth. Mariah would give anything to find out what happened to her mother and clear her father's name. But the truth may be more devastating than she could have imagined.

In this horror story set in colonial New England, a law-abiding Puritan woman goes missing. Or perhaps she has fled or abandoned her family. Or perhaps she has been kidnapped, and set loose to wander in the dense woods of the north. Alone and possibly lost, she meets another woman in the forest. Then everything changes. On a journey that will take her through dark woods full of almost-human wolves, through a deep well wet with the screams of men, and on a living ship made of human bones, our heroine may find that the evil she flees has been inside her all along.

2 CHILDREN FOR SALE. The sign is a last resort. It sits on a farmhouse porch in 1931, but could be found anywhere in an era of breadlines, bank runs and broken dreams. It could have been written by any mother facing impossible choices. For struggling reporter Ellis Reed, the gut-wrenching scene evokes memories of his family’s dark past. He snaps a photograph of the children, not meant for publication. But when it leads to his big break, the consequences are more devastating than he ever imagined. At the paper, Lillian Palmer is haunted by her role in all that happened. She is far too familiar with the heartbreak of children deemed unwanted. As the bonds of motherhood are tested, she and Ellis must decide how much they are willing to risk to mend a fractured family.

Now is the fall of his discontent, as Jason Fitger, newly appointed chair of the English Department of Payne University, takes arms against a sea of troubles, personal and institutional. His ex-wife is sleeping with the dean who must approve whatever modest initiatives he undertakes. The fearsome department secretary Fran clearly runs the show (when not taking in rescue parrots and dogs) and holds plenty of secrets she's not sharing. The lavishly funded Econ Department keeps siphoning off English's meager resources and has taken aim at its remaining office space. And Fitger's attempt to get a mossbacked and antediluvian Shakespeare scholar to retire backfires spectacularly when the press concludes that the Bard is being kicked to the curricular curb.

In 1929, 30-year-old gangster Al Capone ruled both Chicago's underworld and its corrupt government. To a public who scorned Prohibition, "Scarface" became a local hero and national celebrity. But after the brutal St. Valentine's Day Massacre transformed Capone into "Public Enemy Number One," the federal government found an unlikely new hero in a 27-year-old Prohibition agent named Eliot Ness. Chosen to head the legendary law enforcement team known as "The Untouchables," Ness set his sights on crippling Capone's criminal empire. Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz have recaptured a bygone bullet-ridden era while uncovering the previously unrevealed truth behind Scarface's downfall.