Adult

While lifting weights in the Seldon Jackson College gymnasium on a rainy autumn night, Jaed Coffin hears the distinctive whacking sound of sparring boxers down the hall. A year out of college, he has been biding his time as a tutor at a local high school in Sitka, Alaska, without any particular life plan. That evening, Coffin joins a ragtag boxing club; despite feeling initially terrified, he learns to fight. His coach, Victor “the Savage,” invites him to participate in the monthly Roughhouse Friday competition, where men contend for the title of best boxer in southeast Alaska. With every successive match, Coffin realizes that he isn’t just fighting for the championship belt; he is also learning to confront the anger he feels about a past he never knew how to make sense of.

Max and Pip are the strongest couple you know. They're best friends, lovers --- unshakable. But then their son gets sick, and the doctors put the question of his survival into their hands. For the first time, Max and Pip can't agree. They each want a different future for their son. What if they could have both?

Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son and an aging Labrador, both at the discretion of his ex-partner, Julia. It's picturesque, but there's something darker lurking behind the scenes. Jackson's current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, is fairly standard-issue, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network --- and back across the path of his old friend, Reggie.

Connie Goodwin is an expert on America’s fractured past with witchcraft. A young, tenure-track professor in Boston, she’s earned career success by studying the history of magic in colonial America --- especially women’s home recipes and medicines --- and by exposing society's threats against women fluent in those skills. But beyond her studies, Connie harbors a secret: She is the direct descendant of a woman tried as a witch in Salem, an ancestor whose abilities were far more magical than the historical record shows. When a hint from her mother and clues from her research lead Connie to the shocking realization that her partner’s life is in danger, she must race to solve the mystery behind a hundreds’-years-long deadly curse.

Billie James' inheritance isn't much: a little money and a shack in the Mississippi Delta. The house once belonged to her father, a renowned black poet who died unexpectedly when she was four years old. Though Billie was there when the accident happened, she has no memory of that day --- and she hasn't been back to the South since. Thirty years later, Billie returns, but her father's home is unnervingly secluded: her only neighbors are the McGees, the family whose history has been entangled with hers since the days of slavery. As Billie encounters the locals, she hears a strange rumor: that she herself went missing on the day her father died. As the mystery intensifies, she finds out that this forgotten piece of her past could put her in danger.

On the day that a black truck rattles past her house and a Klan flyer lands in her front yard, 10-year-old Beth disappears from her Simmonsville, Georgia, home. Seven years later, Imogene Coulter is burying her father, a Klan leader from whom she has spent her life distancing herself. But Imogene is forced to confront secrets long held by Simmonsville and her own family when, while clearing out her father's apparent hideout on the day of his funeral, she finds a child --- young and alive, in an abandoned basement, and behind a door that only locks from the outside. As Imogene begins to uncover the truth of what happened to young Beth all those years ago, her father’s heir apparent to the Klan’s leadership threatens her and her family.

After a devastating break-up with her fiancé, Geraldine is struggling to get her life back on track in Toronto. Her two old friends, Sunny and Rachel, left ages ago for New York, where they've landed good jobs, handsome husbands and unfairly glamorous lives (or at least so it appears to Geraldine). Sick of watching from the sidelines, Geraldine moves to New York City. After she arrives, though, and zigzags her way through the downtown art scene and rooftop party circuit, she discovers how hard it is to find her footing in a world of influencers and media darlings. Plus, the magazine where Sunny and Rachel work is on the brink of folding. Rachel is struggling to juggle her life as a writer, wife and new mother.

It all starts with a fall from a ladder, in a firehouse in New York City. The firehouse has been converted into a unique Manhattan home and studio where renowned photographer Madison Allen works and lives after raising three children on her own. But the accident, which happens while Maddie is sorting through long-forgotten personal mementos and photos, results in more than a broken ankle. Spurred by old memories, the forced pause in her demanding schedule, and an argument with her daughter that leads to a rare crisis of confidence, Maddie embarks on a road trip. She sets off to reconnect with three very different men to know once and for all if the decisions she made long ago were the right ones.

When Violetta and Mino meet, one finds true love and the other denies it. Both orphans at the Hospital of the Incurables in Venice, an orphanage and music conservatory, they meet and make music together clandestinely until Violetta is selected for the Incurables' renowned chorus. In order to join, she signs an oath never to sing beyond the church doors, effectively sequestering herself for life. Mino flees, heartbroken. Too late, Violetta realizes what she has lost. In rebellion she begins a dangerous and forbidden nightlife, unknowingly drawing closer to Mino as he searches Venice for his long-lost mother. Mino and Violetta must each journey through passion, heartache and betrayal before a dangerous secret reunites them, leading to a shocking and final confrontation.

THE SNAKES exposes the damage wreaked by parents on children as observed by a new member of the Adamson family, Dan, a mixed-race man from Peckham who marries Bea, the daughter who refuses to take any of her father’s filthy money. But when Bea’s brother Alex (who runs a shabby hotel in Paligny, France) dies suddenly in unexplained circumstances, the confusion and suspicion that arise bring other dark family secrets --- and violence --- to the surface. And none of the family, even the good members, go untouched.