Adult

Thirty-one-year-old Nathan Lucius is an ad salesman at a Cape Town newspaper. Disaffected, hard-drinking and plagued by blackouts, Nathan lives alone and has only one true friend, a woman named Madge. But Madge is dying slowly of cancer, and when she asks Nathan to end her pain, she sets off a shocking string of events.

It isn't easy going to jail for a practical joke. Of course, this particular joke left 20 cars wrecked on the highway and two politicians' careers in tatters --- so jail is where Harold landed. Now he's just trying to keep a low profile in the Big House. He wants no part of his fellow inmates' plan to use an escape tunnel to rob two banks. But it's too late; he's in it up to his neck. And that neck may just wind up in a noose.

Dr. Daniel Rinaldi becomes a participant in a domestic drama that blows up right outside his front door. In the chaos that follows, Rinaldi learns that his neighbor has told her boyfriend that Rinaldi is her lover. As things heat up, Rinaldi becomes a murder suspect. But this is just the first act in HEAD WOUNDS. As one savagery follows another, Rinaldi is forced to relive a terrible night that haunts him still. And to realize that now he --- and those he loves --- are being victimized by a brilliant killer still in the grip of delusion. Determined to destroy Rinaldi by systematically targeting those close to him, computer genius Sebastian Maddox strives to cause as much psychological pain as possible, before finally orchestrating a bold, macabre death for his quarry.

Ada has always been unusual. As an infant in southern Nigeria, she is a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents successfully prayed her into existence, but something must have gone awry, as the young Ada becomes a troubled child, prone to violent fits of anger and grief. Born “with one foot on the other side,” she begins to develop separate selves. When Ada travels to America for college, a traumatic event crystallizes the selves into something more powerful. As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these alters --- now protective, now hedonistic --- move into control, Ada’s life spirals in a dangerous direction.

World War I is over. Alafair Tucker is overjoyed that her elder son, George Washington Tucker, has finally returned home from the battlefields of France. Yet she is the only one in the family who senses that he has somehow changed. One rainy day, Gee Dub spies a woman trudging along the country road. Once made comfortable at the Tucker farm, Holly Johnson reveals she has forged her way from Maine to Oklahoma in hopes of finding the soldier she married before he shipped to France. At the war's end, Daniel Johnson disappeared without a trace. But when he finally turns up, shot dead, Gee Dub is arrested on suspicion of murder, and the entire extended Tucker family rallies to his defense.

What are the chances that convicted killer Sam Blue is innocent of the serial murders of three young women? Determined to clear his name, no matter the cost to her career, Detective Harriet Blue accepts a risky reassignment to a remote town where a diary found on the roadside reveals a murderous plan. And the first killing, shortly after her arrival, suggests that the clock is already ticking. Meanwhile, back in the city, a young woman holds the key to crack Harriet's brother's case wide open. If only she could escape the madmen holding her hostage.

In 2008, 18-year-old Marie reported that a masked man broke into her apartment and raped her. Within days, police and even those closest to Marie became suspicious of her story. Confronted with inconsistencies in her story and the doubts of others, Marie broke down and said her story was a lie. Police charged Marie with false reporting. More than two years later, Colorado detective Stacy Galbraith was assigned to investigate a case of sexual assault, a case that bore an eerie resemblance to a rape that had taken place months earlier in a nearby town. She joined forces with the detective on that case, Edna Hendershot, and the two soon realized they were dealing with a serial rapist.

Named one of the “40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years” by Columbia Journalism Review, Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. In DON’T CALL ME PRINCESS, Orenstein’s most resonant and important essays are available for the first time in collected form, updated with both an original introduction and personal reflections on each piece. Her takes on reproductive justice, the infertility industry, tensions between working and stay-at-home moms, pink ribbon fear-mongering and the complications of girl culture are not merely timeless --- they have become more urgent in our contemporary political climate.

Lars and Shaine have returned to a quiet life on the islands, but for Lars there is unfinished business. When he gets information that will lead him to exact revenge on behalf of his young protégé, the young woman he’s grown to think of as a daughter, he decides to take action in secret. When he lands in a hospital, Shaine is called in from a thousand miles away and must take the lead in the last job of Lars’ storied career of death for hire. Facing his own aging body, Lars struggles to take a back seat to the youngster he has trained in his image. They’ll face a local drug boss along with an old enemy as they work to fire the last bullet they’ll ever need to --- before one finds them first.

Ike Singer is a demolitions expert. Despite being at the very top of his profession, a personal mistake that led to catastrophe nearly brought Ike's life to ruin. He has spent every day since trying to atone for it and piece his family back together. And he believes he is succeeding. Until today. Suddenly Ike finds himself the target of a brilliant psychopath bent on systematically destroying his life. And this grudge runs as deep as they come. Ike must use every resource in his arsenal to prevent this killer's vengeance, and give everything in his power to save his family and his life before the timer hits zero.