Adult

In this final installment of the Red Sparrow trilogy, Russian president Vladimir Putin is planning the covert assassination of a high-ranking US official with the intention of replacing him with a mole whom Russian intelligence has cultivated for more than 15 years. Catching wind of this plot, Dominika, Nate and their CIA colleagues must unmask the traitor before he or she is able to reveal that Dominika has been spying for years on behalf of the CIA. Ultimately, the lines of danger converge on the spectacular billion-dollar presidential palace on the Black Sea during a power weekend with Putin’s inner circle. Does Nate sacrifice himself to save Dominika? Does she forfeit herself to protect Nate? Do they go down together?

Robert Weekes is a practitioner of empirical philosophy --- an arcane, female-dominated branch of science used to summon the wind, shape clouds of smoke, heal the injured, and even fly. When a deadly accident puts his philosophical abilities to the test, Robert wins a scholarship to study at Radcliffe College, an all-women’s school. He falls hard for Danielle Hardin, a disillusioned young war hero turned political radical. However, Danielle’s activism and Robert’s recklessness attract the attention of the same fanatical anti-philosophical group that Robert’s mother fought years before. Robert and Danielle band together to fight for Robert’s place among the next generation of empirical philosophers --- and for philosophy’s very survival against the men who would destroy it.

Finally recovered from two gunshot wounds, Dismas Hardy is looking forward to easing into retirement and reconnecting with his family. But he is pulled back into the courtroom when Grant Wagner, the steely owner of a successful family business, is murdered. The prime suspect is Wagner’s bookkeeper, Abby Jarvis, a former client of Hardy’s who had been receiving large sums of cash under-the-table from the company --- but she insists that she’s innocent. Preparing for trial, Dismas investigates the Wagner clan, discovering dark, twisted secrets, jealous siblings, gold-digging girlfriends, betrayals and blackmail. The closer he gets to the Wagners, the clearer it becomes that Dismas has a target painted on his back.

The story begins in an Israeli military jail, where Jonathan recalls the series of events that led him there. Two years earlier: Moving back to Israel after several years in Pennsylvania, Jonathan is ready to fight to preserve and defend the Jewish state. But he is also conflicted about the possibility of having to monitor the occupied Palestinian territories, a concern that grows deeper and more urgent when he meets Nimreen and Laith --- the twin daughter and son of his mother’s friend. From that morning on, the three become inseparable. But then that fateful day arrives, the one that lands Jonathan in prison and changes his relationship with the twins forever.

Lu Rile is a relentlessly focused young photographer struggling to make ends meet. Working three jobs, responsible for her aging father, and worrying that the crumbling warehouse she lives in is being sold to developers, she is at a point of desperation. One day, in the background of a self-portrait, Lu accidentally captures on film a boy falling past her window to his death. The photograph turns out to be startlingly gorgeous, the best work of art she’s ever made. But the decision to show it is not easy, especially as she forges an intense bond with the boy’s mother. Lu becomes torn between equally fierce desires: to use the photograph to advance her career, and to protect a woman she has come to love.

Told in three distinct sections, ASYMMETRY explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography and justice. The first section, “Folly,” tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer. By contrast, “Madness” is narrated by Amar, an Iraqi-American man who, on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan, is detained by immigration officers and spends the last weekend of 2008 in a holding room in Heathrow. These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda.

In the autumn of 1960, Angie Glass is living an idyllic life in her Wisconsin hometown. At 21, she is married to charming, handsome Paul and has just given birth to a baby boy. But when Paul’s niece, Ruby, reports that her father, Henry, has committed suicide and that her mother, Silja, is missing, Angie and Paul drop everything and fly to the small upstate town of Stonekill, New York, to be by Ruby’s side. Angie thinks they’re coming to the rescue of Paul’s grief-stricken young niece, but Ruby is a composed and enigmatic 17-year-old who resists Angie’s attempts to nurture her. As Angie learns more about the complicated Glass family, she begins to question the very fabric of her own marriage.

FBI agent Michael Gallagher never dreamed that his job would bring him back to his hometown of Harmony Harbor. Or that one of his best leads would be the woman he once loved. He regrets the way they ended, and he’d do anything to make things right with her now. But first he needs to regain her trust. Shay Angel wants to leave the past behind her. And that includes Michael Gallagher, the only man she ever let close enough to break her heart. But she needs his help to find her uncle and clear his name. She won’t hesitate to risk everything to save her family, but will she dare to risk her heart all over again?

Europe, 1940: Belgium has been overrun by the German army. Posing as a friar, a British operative talks his way into a monastery just before Nazi art thieves plan to sweep through the area and whisk everything of value back to Berlin. The ersatz man of the cloth adds an old leather Bible to the monastery’s library and then escapes. London, 2017: A construction worker makes a grisly discovery --- a skeletal arm-bone with a rusty handcuff attached to the wrist. It’s all that remains of a courier who died in a V-2 rocket attack. The woman who will put these two disparate events together --- and understand the looming tragedy she must hurry to prevent --- is Russian historian and former Soviet chess champion Larissa Mendelovg Klimt.

During the reign of Charles II, London was a city in flux. After years of civil war and political turmoil, England's capital became the center for major advances in the sciences, the theatre, architecture, trade and ship-building that paved the way for the creation of the British Empire. Throughout the quarter-century Charles was on the throne, London also suffered several serious reverses: the plague in 1665 and the Great Fire in 1666, and severe defeat in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, which brought about notable economic decline. But thanks to the genius and resilience of the people of London, and the occasionally wavering stewardship of the King, the city rose from the ashes to become the economic capital of Europe.