Adult

Vera Sigall, now 80 years old, has lived a mysterious, ascetic life far from the limelight of literary circles. This powerful character has a profound effect on those around her --- Daniel, an architect and her neighbor and friend, unhappy in his marriage and career; Emilia, a Franco-Chilean student who travels to Santiago to write a thesis on the elusive Vera; and Horacio, an acclaimed poet with whom Vera had a tumultuous, passionate affair in her youth. As Daniel, Emilia and Horacio tell their stories, they reconstruct Vera’s past and search for their own identities.

Early one morning, 26-year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything's all right at home --- he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs of their stylish Seoul duplex. He can't remember much about the night before; having suffered from seizures for most of his life, Yu-jin often has trouble with his memory. All he has is a faint impression of his mother calling his name. But was she calling for help? Or begging for her life?

In GENTLEMEN FORMERLY DRESSED, Rowland Sinclair and his friends travel to England, where they feel safe. Then Viscount Pierrepont is discovered in his club, impaled by a sword, and sporting a frilly negligée and makeup. His murder, and the suspicion falling on his young niece, quickly plunge the Australians into a queer world of British aristocracy, Fascist Blackshirts, illicit love, scandal, and spies ranging from London and its suburbs to Bletchley Park and Oxford, and inevitably drawing in Wil Sinclair as well as players like H.G. Wells and Winston Churchill. It's a world where gentlemen are not always what they are dressed up to be.

Lauren Groff brings readers into a physical world that is at once domestic and wild --- a place where the hazards of the natural world lie waiting to pounce, yet the greatest threats and mysteries are still of an emotional, psychological nature. Among those navigating this place are a resourceful pair of abandoned sisters; a lonely boy, grown up; a restless, childless couple; a searching, homeless woman; and an unforgettable, recurring character --- a steely and conflicted wife and mother. The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida becomes its gravitational center: an energy, a mood, as much as a place of residence.

Mrs. Fairfax, a wealthy widow, hires Charlie Doherty to prove that her husband’s suicide was actually murder. He expects to pocket a nice chunk of change to prove what everyone already knows: Walter Fairfax walked into his office in the Empire State Building one morning, took a phone call and shot himself. But he quickly finds out that there is more to the Fairfax incident than a simple suicide. Before long, he discovers that Mr. Fairfax was leading a double life. In an investigation that quickly involves global implications, Doherty finds himself against not only some of the most powerful people in New York City, but against the most evil men in the world.

Josie and Frank Moore are happy…at least Josie thinks they are. Frank is a phenomenal father and still looks at his wife like she’s the beautiful woman he married more than a decade ago. Josie isn’t just happy, she’s lucky. Until one Saturday morning when Josie borrows her husband’s phone to make a quick call --- and sees nine words that shatter her world. Now Josie feels as if she is standing at the edge of a sharp precipice. As she looks back at pivotal moments in the relationship she believed would last forever, she is also plunging ahead, surprising everyone (especially herself) with how far she will go to uncover the extent of her husband’s devastating secret.

Life is tough for a Gypsy detective in Budapest. The cops don’t trust you because you’re a Gypsy. Your fellow Gypsies, even your own family, shun you because you’re a cop. The dead, however, don't care. So when Balthazar Kovacs, a detective in the city's murder squad, gets a mysterious text message on his phone, he goes to work. The message has two parts: a photograph and an address. The photograph shows a man, in his early 30s, lying on his back with his eyes open, half-covered by a blue plastic sheet. The address is 26 Republic Square, the former Communist Party headquarters, and once the most feared building in the country. But when Kovacs arrives at Republic Square, the body is gone.

A.M. Homes exposes the heart of an uneasy America in her new collection --- exploring our attachments to each other through characters who aren't quite who they hoped to become, though there is no one else they can be. In "A Prize for Every Player," a man is nominated to run for president by the customers of a big box store, while he and his family do their weekly shopping. At a conference on genocide(s) in the title story, old friends rediscover themselves and one another --- finding spiritual and physical comfort in ancient traditions. And in "Hello Everybody" and "She Got Away," Homes revisits a Los Angeles family obsessed with the surfaces and frightened of what lives below.

The newshound in reporter Geneva Chase spurs her to bad, if not downright dangerous, choices as two unrelated crimes unexpectedly collide. A 15-year-old-girl at her ward's high school has vanished along with her English teacher. Is this same-old, same-old, or something more? And then there's the abused woman who torched her sadistic husband, and how to keep her out of the clutches of powerful mobsters --- and thus, out of the news. Out on the crime beat, Geneva works to unravel the connection, if any, between these two disparate stories while her newspaper is put up for sale, a high-flying Hollywood production lights up the town, and her personal battles accelerate.

A young boy is murdered, shaking a small community to its core. A girl climbs into a van and vanishes in the deep, dark woods. Elia Furenti is 16, living in a secluded house with his parents in Ponte, Northern Italy, a life so unremarkable that even unhappiness has been accepted as normal. Elia's father lost his job, and now he begins to lose himself in the darkest corners of his mind. Then a new friend arrives in Ponte, firmly propelling Elia to the edge of adulthood, and everything starts to unravel.