Adult

In DOPESICK, Beth Macy takes us into the epicenter of America's 20-plus-year struggle with opioid addiction. Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy endeavors to answer a grieving mother's question --- why her only son died --- and comes away with a harrowing story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy parses how America embraced a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm.

READ ME holds a sinister mirror up to the ways in which we observe, judge and influence people. Leo Benedictus' prose draws readers into the dark, manipulative mind of a serial stalker as he targets women across London, escalating his efforts until he settles on Frances --- a bright young professional whose career is set to take off --- whose life he proceeds to unravel from the inside, out.

After more than a year on the road, amateur private investigator Ash McKenna is ready to face the demons he ran away from in New York City and has decided to become a PI for real. But within moments of stepping off the plane, Ginny Tonic, the drag queen crime lord who once employed him --- and then tried to have him killed --- asks to see him. One of her newest drag queen soldiers has gone missing, and Ginny suspects she’s been ensnared by the burgeoning heroin scene on Staten Island. Ginny wants Ash to find her. He accepts, and quickly learns there’s something much bigger at play. As Ash navigates deadly terrain, he find that his most dangerous adversary might be his own past. Because those demons he ran away from have been waiting for him to come back.

When Pru Marlowe is called to a forest clearing to help with an illegally trapped bear, she finds a colleague passed out drunk, his pet ferret locked in his truck. When one of her old running buddies turns up dead and then the town's pampered pets begin to disappear, Pru can't tell if her colleague is involved. The offer of a job --- and maybe something more --- from a hunky warden only complicates Pru's life as she goes on her rounds between her small Berkshires hometown and the woods that lie beyond. And although her crotchety tabby, Wallis, would have her make some changes in what has become a familiar routine, Pru knows her special skills set her apart as the only one who can shed light on these crimes --- and save the animals at risk.

It's 1928, and Jesse Sutherlin now has his own family and has made a success at the sawmill below Virginia's Buffalo Mountain working for JG Edwards. The country's economy is booming. And then David Privette, the sheriff who succeeded Dalton P. Franklin with whom Jesse had a run-in or two in COPPER KETTLE, arrives with surprising news --- the body of Jesse's father has just been discovered in the pit at Smith's West Oxford Street ice house operation. How could this be? In 1918, a man had brought the family the news that Sutherlin, Sr., had died of the Spanish flu while seeking work up in Norfolk, Virginia. Sheriff Privette doesn't take a deep interest in this cold crime, but Jesse is not letting it go.

After Jake Constable quits the drug business, his realtor/ex-wife, Nina, gets him a job as a housesitter for her wealthy clients. Jake celebrates by throwing a party in the mansion he was hired to look after. Unfortunately, the guest list gets out of hand, leaving Jake to contend with a hallucinogenic vitamin-dispensing yogi, a dead guy in the bathroom, and The Norwegian --- a criminal force of nature with a grudge against Jake. The situation threatens to become an international incident when Nina's powerbroker uncle and two secret agents from China show up to turn the screws on Jake. Soon after that, his friends start disappearing.

Detective Porter and the team have been pulled from the hunt for Anson Bishop, the Four Monkey Killer, by the feds. When the body of a young girl is found beneath the frozen waters of Jackson Park Lagoon, she is identified as Ella Reynolds, missing three weeks. But how did she get there? The lagoon froze months earlier. More baffling? She’s found wearing the clothes of another girl, missing less than two days. Obsessed with catching Bishop, Porter follows a single grainy photograph from Chicago to the streets of New Orleans and stumbles into a world darker than he could have possibly imagined, where he quickly realizes that the only place more frightening than the mind of a serial killer is the mind of the mother from which he came.

In March of 1603, as she helps to nurse the dying Queen Elizabeth of England, Frances Gorges dreams of her parents’ country estate. She is happy to stay at home when King James of Scotland succeeds to the throne. But when her ambitious uncle forcibly brings Frances to the royal palace, she is a ready target for the twisted scheming of the Privy Seal, Lord Cecil. As a dark campaign to destroy both King and Parliament gathers pace, culminating in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, Frances is surrounded by danger, finding happiness only with the King’s precocious young daughter --- and, with Tom Wintour, the one courtier she feels she can trust. But Wintour has a secret that, when revealed, places Frances in conflict with her royal charge and in fear for her own family.

Earl Marcus found new hope after confronting the unspeakable evil unleashed by his father’s fundamentalist Church of the Holy Flame. Now plying his trade as a private investigator in the North Georgia mountains, he’s drawn once again into a dark abyss of depravity, and murder. Tasked with what seems like a routine job, Earl stumbles into a mysterious cornfield where an old mountain legend appears to have awakened. Just as he begins to hear rumors of a place in the woods behind a dark cornfield where a killer collects human skulls, his partner Mary Hawkins vanishes. As the litany of terror grows, the poisoned spirits of Earl’s past return to claim their final victims.

Jamie Elders may have the natural talent of a poker savant, but her dreams of going pro and getting out of the tiny town of Blind River, New York are going nowhere fast. Especially once she lands in a huge pile of debt to her uncle Loyal, who demands Jamie’s help cleaning up a mess late one night. But disposing of a dead man and covering up his connection to the town’s most powerful judge goes beyond family duty. When it comes out that the victim was a beloved athlete and Loyal pins the murder on Jamie’s brother, Toby, only Jamie can save him. But with a dogged detective on her trail and her own future at stake, she’ll have to decide: embrace her inner criminal, or defy it --- and face the consequences.