Adult

After months of disturbing behavior, Gardner Quinn has vanished. Her older sister, Fredericka, is desperate to find her, but Fred is also pregnant --- miraculously so, in a near-future America struggling with infertility. So she entrusts the job to their brother, Carter. Just home from war, Carter’s search for his sister is a welcome distraction from mysterious physical symptoms he can’t ignore...and his slightly-more-than recreational drinking. Carter’s efforts to find Gardner lead him into a dangerous underground, where he begins to grasp the risks she took on as a Nurse Completionist. But his investigation also leads back to their father, a veteran of a decades-long war just like Carter himself, who may be concealing a painful truth.

Finn and Layla are driving along the highway when Finn decides to stop at a service station to use the restroom. When he returns, Layla is gone. That is the story Finn told to the police. But it is not the whole story. Ten years later, Finn is engaged to Layla’s sister, Ellen. Their shared grief over what happened to Layla drew them close. Still, there’s something about Ellen that Finn has never fully understood. His heart wants to believe that she is the one for him, even though a sixth sense tells him not to trust her. Then, not long before he and Ellen are to be married, Finn gets a phone call. Someone from his past has seen Layla --- hiding in plain sight. If Layla is alive --- and on Finn’s trail --- what does she want? And how much does she know?

An American diplomat --- reformed alcoholic, unreformed gambler and inveterate smart-ass --- finds himself under threat of disgrace and murder, even as he seeks love and redemption on the strange and spirit-ridden island of Madagascar. Author Stephen Holgate brings the mystery and mysticism of Madagascar to life in his haunting and exciting second novel.

Every other weekend, Hope and Eden wait for their father to pick them up at a strip-mall bus stop. It’s the divorce shuffle; they’re used to it. Only this weekend, he’s forgotten, and their world will irrevocably change when a stranger lures them into his truck. More than 20 years later, Hope is a playwright with only one play produced long ago, newly evicted from an illegal sublet, working a humiliating temp job. Eden has long since distanced herself from her family, and no one seems to know where she is. When the man who abducted them is up for parole, the sisters might be able to offer testimony to keep him jailed. Hope sets out to find her sister --- and to find herself --- and it becomes the journey of a lifetime.

Merry, Sam and Conor are the perfect family in the perfect place. Merry adores the domestic life. Sam, formerly an academic, is pursuing a new career as a filmmaker. When Merry's childhood friend Frank visits their Swedish paradise, she immediately becomes part of the family. She befriends the neighbors, and even finds herself embracing the domesticity she's always seemed to scorn. All their lives, Frank and Merry have been more like sisters than best friends. And that's why Frank soon sees the things others might miss --- treacherous things, which are almost impossible to believe when looking at this perfect family. But Frank, of all people, knows that the truth is rarely what you want the world to see.

Sergeant Alexandra Cupidi, a recent transfer from the London metro police to the rugged Kentish countryside, faces a bizarre case: a woman found floating in local marsh land, dead of no apparent cause. The case gets even stranger when detectives contact the victim's next of kin, her son, a high-powered graphic designer living in London. Adopted at the age of two, he'd never known his mother until a homeless woman knocked on his door, claiming to be his mother, just the night before --- at the same time her body was being dredged from the water. Detective Cupidi must discover who the woman really was, who killed her, and how she managed to reconnect with her long lost son, apparently from beyond the grave.

Second-string linebacker turned disillusioned defense attorney Jake Lassiter finally switches teams. Appointed special prosecutor in a high-profile murder case, Lassiter vows to take down a prominent surgeon accused of killing his wife. But there is no evidence, no witness and no body. And standing in Lassiter’s way are the defense lawyers: slick-talking Steve Solomon and blueblood Victoria Lord, who have their own complicated history with the defendant. Not to mention the specter of CTE, the lethal brain disease Lassiter may have contracted banging heads in the NFL. Drained of his mental edge just when he needs it most, Lassiter must do whatever it takes to win this case --- even if it costs him his life.

In the beautiful Maine woods, a partly preserved body is discovered. Investigators realize that the dead young woman gave birth shortly before her death. But there is no sign of a baby. Private detective Charlie Parker is hired by a lawyer to shadow the police investigation and find the infant, but Parker is not the only searcher. Someone else is following the trail left by the woman, someone with an interest in much more than a missing child…someone prepared to leave bodies in his wake. And in a house by the woods, a toy telephone begins to ring and a young boy is about to receive a call from a dead woman.

Lucy Albright is far from her Long Island upbringing when she arrives on the campus of her small California college, and happy to be hundreds of miles from her mother, whom she has never forgiven for an act of betrayal in her early teen years. Quickly grasping at her fresh start, Lucy embraces college life and all it has to offer. And then she meets Stephen DeMarco, who sees something in Lucy that no one else has. Meanwhile, Stephen is determined to forget an incident buried in his past that, if exposed, could ruin him. Lucy knows there’s something about Stephen that isn’t to be trusted. Stephen knows Lucy can’t tear herself away. And their addicting entanglement will have consequences they never could have imagined.

Spanning the years of the first great settlement of the West, THE REMOVES tells the intertwining stories of 15-year-old Anne Cummins, frontierswoman Libbie Custer, and Libbie’s husband, the Civil War hero George Armstrong Custer. When Anne survives a surprise attack on her family’s homestead, she is thrust into a difficult life she never anticipated --- living among the Cheyenne as both a captive and, eventually, a member of the tribe. Libbie, too, is thrown into a brutal, unexpected life when she marries Custer. But when what Anne and Libbie have come to know is suddenly altered through tragedy and loss, they realize how indelibly shaped they are by life on the treacherous, extraordinary American plains.