Adult

For nearly a year, Beth Murphy has been plotting to leave her abusive husband. The time has finally arrived, and this is her one chance at freedom. Each part of her plan has to be carefully thought-out, because one small slip and her violent husband will find her. A couple hundred miles away, Jeffrey returns home from a work trip to find that his wife, Sabine, is missing. Wherever she is, she has taken almost nothing with her. Her abandoned car is the only trace of her the police have to go on, and all signs point to foul play. Where is Sabine? And who is Beth? As her husband starts piecing together her whereabouts, Beth will have to make a decision about her future that will leave readers breathless.

When America declared war on Spain in 1898, the US Army had just 26,000 men spread around the country --- hardly an army at all. In desperation, the Rough Riders were born. A unique group of volunteers, ranging from Ivy League athletes to Arizona cowboys and led by Theodore Roosevelt, they helped secure victory in Cuba in a series of gripping, bloody fights across the island. Roosevelt called their charge in the Battle of San Juan Hill his “crowded hour” --- a turning point in his life, one that led directly to the White House. As THE CROWDED HOUR reveals, it was a turning point for America as well, uniting the country and ushering in a new era of global power.

Lured to a “crime scene” by a mysterious digital invitation, Ruth Lake is horrified by what she finds: a bizarre and gruesome tableau surrounded by a crowd of gawkers. The deadly work is the latest “art installation” designed by a diabolical criminal dubbed the Ferryman. Not only is this criminal cold-blooded, he’s a narcissistic exhibitionist desperate for an audience. He’s also clever at promoting his deadly handiwork. Exploiting England’s current true-crime craze, he uses social media to titillate and terrorize the public. Ruth is joined in the investigation by her partner Greg Carver, who is slowly regaining his strength after a run-in with another sadistic criminal. But Greg can’t seem to shake the bewildering effects of the head wound that nearly ended him.

They are Phoenix’s First Family: Philip Martin, son of the sitting Senator and an ex-football player; his wife Marina, the stylish and elegant director of Phoenix’s fine arts museum; and their four-year-old daughter Amabel. Finn Hunt is working a dull office job to pay off her college debt when she meets Philip and charms Amabel. She eagerly agrees to nanny, thinking she’s lucked into the job of a lifetime. But when a young woman approaches Finn, claiming a connection with Philip and asking Finn to pass on a message, Finn becomes caught up in a web of deceit with the Senate seat at its center. And Finn isn’t exactly innocent herself: she too has a background she has kept hidden, and everything is about to be laid bare.

When we first meet Claire, she’s living in Sedona, Arizona, with her boyfriend Cal and ducking calls from her mother. Her mom is a world class psychic on the East Coast, and Claire doesn’t want her to discover the truth. Claire works in the family business and calls herself a psychic, but she doesn’t really have “the gift” and hasn’t for a long time. She's a fraud. Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Rena, a young mother, has family issues of her own. She’s divorced, and her four-year-old daughter, Stephanie, suffers from mysterious, seemingly incurable stomach problems. When Claire and Rena meet by chance on an airplane, their carefully constructed lives begin to explode. Can these two women help each other, and can they help Stephanie before it’s too late?

From the days of her childhood in the 1950s Midwest, Katherine knows she is different, and that her parents are not who they seem. As she matures from a girl of rare intelligence into an exceptional mathematician, she must face the most human of problems. Who is she? What is the cost of love, and what is the cost of ambition? These questions grow ever more entangled as Katherine strives to take her place in the world of higher mathematics and becomes involved with a brilliant and charismatic professor. When she embarks on a quest to conquer the Riemann hypothesis, the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of her time, she turns to a theorem with a mysterious history that may hold both the lock and the key to her identity, and to secrets long buried during World War II.

It’s 1924 in Branchville, South Carolina, and three women have come to a crossroads. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters. Retta, a first-generation freed slave, comes to Gertrude’s aid by watching her children, despite the gossip it causes in her community. Annie, the matriarch of the influential Coles family, offers Gertrude employment at her sewing circle, while facing problems of her own at home. These three women seemingly have nothing in common, yet as they unite to stand up to injustices that have long plagued the small town, they find strength in the bond that ties women together.

The Harmony Resort promises hope for struggling marriages. Run by celebrity power couple Drs. Miles and Grace Markell, the “last resort” offers a chance for partners to repair their relationships in a luxurious setting on the gorgeous Mayan Riviera. Johanna and Ben have a marriage that looks perfect on the surface, but in reality, they don’t know each other at all. Shell and Colin fight constantly: after all, Colin is a workaholic, and Shell always comes second to his job as an executive at a powerful mining company. But what has really torn them apart is too devastating to talk about. When both couples begin Harmony’s intensive therapy program, it becomes clear that Harmony is not all it seems --- and neither are Miles and Grace themselves.

When her grandfather dies, Emily Dawson --- the poor cousin in a prosperous English merchant clan --- receives an unexpected inheritance: Peverills, a sugar plantation in Barbados that her grandfather never told anyone he owned. When Emily accompanies her cousin and his new wife to Barbados, she finds Peverills a burnt-out shell, reduced to ruins in 1816, when a rising of enslaved people sent the island up in flames. Why would her practical-minded grandfather leave her a property in ruins? Why are the neighboring plantation owners, the Davenants, so eager to acquire Peverills? The answer lies in the past --- a tangled history of lies, greed, clandestine love, heartbreaking betrayal and a bold bid for freedom.

While undergoing a routine medical procedure, multibillionaire Richard “Dodge” Forthrast is pronounced brain dead and put on life support. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo Shepherd. Dodge’s family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud, until it can eventually be revived. In the coming years, technology allows Dodge’s brain to be turned back on. An eternal afterlife --- the Bitworld --- is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem.