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It’s December 1805, and Eliza Hamilton is determined to seek justice. One young woman is dead, another has vanished --- both residents of a house where Eliza’s friend, Alice, lives among other craftswomen struggling to survive in a city unforgiving toward widows and orphans. With no help from the constabulary because the young woman’s body was found in a bad part of town --- and was dressed as a man --- Eliza vows to protect the women and uncover the truth. She suspects a connection between the death and the disappearance, especially given that the young lady who disappeared went missing while searching for the woman who was later found dead. As Eliza traces their last known steps, she unearths a hidden world of dangerous secrets lurking beneath the city --- secrets that could tear apart everything she holds dear.

When their beloved sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into a decade of stubborn silence. Busy with their own lives --- divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs and ballet recitals --- their children do not want to get involved. As for their grandchildren? Impossible. THIS IS NOT ABOUT US is a story of growing up and growing old, the weight of parental expectations, and the complex connection between sisters.

Twelve-year-old Zach is cautiously optimistic. His father Bram, whose business is in dire need of cash, has put together a father-son backcountry ski weekend to wine and dine his biggest investors. Schooled in outdoor survival by his mother, Zach is eager to prove himself to the hypercritical Bram. Maybe if Zach shows how useful he is, he can earn his father’s love. But Zach knows to be on high alert around Bram, and he sees the way the group ignores the increasingly threatening conditions. For the first time in his beloved mountains, he is faced with the unknown, convinced that something watches their cabin from the treeline. Something that leaves behind strange tracks and picks its prey clean. As the adults recklessly test the limits of the outdoors, Zach worries he might be in even more danger than he realized.

Peggy and Drew, both aspiring writers, move to an isolated canal boat with their 14-year-old son. Peggy is the glue that holds their family together, even as their son is bullied relentlessly for his physique and his family’s lack of money. But when Drew becomes frustrated by his wife’s sudden writing success, he moves their boat further and further from civilization. With their increasing isolation, personal challenges become harder to ignore, even as they desperately try to break toxic generational patterns. But when Drew’s gaslighting becomes too much for Peggy to take, it sets off a catastrophic series of events.

In AMERICAN STRUGGLE, Jon Meacham illuminates the nation’s complicated past. This rich and diverse collection covers a wide spectrum of history, from 1619 to the 21st century, with primary-source documents that take us back to critical moments in which Americans fought over the meaning and the direction of the national experiment. From the founders to Lincoln to Obama, from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, from Seneca Falls to the March on Washington, this chorus tells the story of the country and of its people. As clashes over liberty and slavery, inclusion and exclusion, play out, these voices remind us that contentious citizenship and fair-minded observations are essential to bringing about the more perfect union envisioned in the Preamble to the Constitution.

Dan Simon's debut novel takes place in Ashland, New Hampshire, a former mill town in the lakes region, and is told in six voices. Among them are Carolyn, a 20-year-old writer at a turning point in her life; Gordon, who arrives in Ashland in the twilight of his years; Andy, a local boy; Geoff, Carolyn's writing teacher at Plymouth State; and Edith, Gordon's wife, who is inadvertently Carolyn's spiritual guide and friend. Then there is Jennie, Carolyn's aunt, who seems to offer her a model for how to live. But things aren't always what they seem, and Carolyn must discover her own rules and make her own way.

Diana, Justin, Errol and Vivian worked hard, got A's and attended a good university --- only to graduate into the Great Recession of 2008. Now, despite their newly minted degrees, they’re unemployed and stuck again under their parents’ roofs in a hypercompetitive Chinese American community. So when Grace --- once the neighborhood golden child, now a Harvard Law School dropout --- asks to make a documentary about the crew, they agree. The video, "Bad Asians," goes viral on an up-and-coming media platform (YouTube, anyone?). Suddenly, millions of people know them as cruel caricatures, each full of pent-up frustrations with the others. And after a desperate attempt at spin control further derails their plans for the lives they’d always imagined, the friends must face harsh truths about themselves and coming of age in the new millennium.

Nineteen-year-old Celia Dent keeps telling herself how lucky she is to be working at the phone company and to be married to Drew. Celia’s contentment with her little life is shattered, though, when a woman she knows from work is murdered in a love tryst gone awry. What would that be like, Celia wonders, to die for love --- or to kill for love? Before she knows it, her musings about love-and-death happenings are bleeding into daily life. Suddenly she’s playing hooky from work and searching for a love tryst of her very own. She’s practicing her marksmanship at a local gun range and thinking about how good it would feel to bury something sharp inside her domineering husband’s ear. It’s all pretend, though, until the night comes when Celia finally goes too far, and she and Drew are set on a deadly collision course.

Detective Casey Duncan and her husband, Sheriff Eric Dalton, are entering a new chapter of life as parents to their six-month-old baby. Their family is hidden away in the sanctuary town of Haven's Rock where they can live safe and private lives. But when they encounter hikers too close to the borders of Haven's Rock, they realize they're in danger of being exposed. When they find one of the hikers dead the next day, they realize that their paranoia was justified, but they're no closer to finding out who these people were and what they were doing in the vicinity of Haven's Rock. Only by tracing the hikers' movements, as well as examining the recent behavior of their closest neighbors, the workers of a secretive mining camp, will they be able to figure out where the threat is coming from and shut it down.

After years of excuses, Tess has finally agreed to go caving with her best friend, Allie. As Tess and Allie descend into the depths, they realize they’re not alone. A stranger who claims to be a fellow caver harasses them. Allie insults the guy --- and he retaliates. Soon, Tess is trapped inside a narrow crawl space hundreds of feet underground, fighting to stay alive. Twenty-four hours later, as a hospitalized Tess recounts her harrowing story of survival, the detective interviewing her shares new and shocking secrets about Allie's true past. Together, they begin to suspect the brutal attack wasn’t so random after all. Who was Allie, really? Why did this man target them? And did Tess really leave the danger behind when she escaped the cave?

Caleb was driving home for Christmas. Steven was pounding beers at a local bar. Matthew was out looking for his ex-girlfriend. Leo was walking in the woods on a winter night. Then they disappeared. Days, weeks, years later, their bodies turn up in icy rivers hundreds of miles apart. How did they get there? What, if anything, connects them? Some of their loved ones believe the official answers. Some are convinced the boys are victims of an insidious network called the Smiley Face Killers. Some are trying to forget them altogether. Meanwhile, Caleb, Steven, Matthew and Leo find one other --- and other boys like them --- in the murky depths of the afterlife. Each tells his story in his own way, speaking his version of truth, confessing his desires and grievances, and even his hopes for a future he still somehow believes belongs to him.

Lily Webb is deeply in love with a charismatic boy, a college-bound quarterback. But their dreams of a life together are cut short when his passionate protectiveness leads to an irrevocable choice. Lily already knows the sting of loss, beginning with the death of her mother, a tragedy that left deep scars on both her and her gifted younger sister, Jane. Jane seeks escape in the abstract world of mathematics and quantum mechanics --- when she can keep the demons that fuel her addictions at bay. As the years pass, Lily buries her twin griefs deep in her heart, finding solace and a new beginning with Marshall Middleton, a renowned ornithologist. But when the boy who was once everything to Lily reappears in her life, she struggles with questions around that terrible night in high school.

Alone at a party, Charli knows she’s in a rut. Kicking around with the rest of London’s bohemian dropouts, she has no idea what to do with her arts degree, and her research project on Romy Haag --- the transsexual disco singer and longtime lover of David Bowie --- has all but stalled out. But her life takes a turn when she bumps into the mysterious Alexander Geist. Androgynously, glamorously handsome, he feels something like a soul mate. Naturally, when he leaves for Berlin, Charli follows. There, at the center of the city’s febrile party scene, Charli and Alexander embark on their great project: turn Alexander into the greatest pop star since David Bowie. But Alexander is elusive, mercurial; Charli is in over her head before she realizes just how self-destructive her life has become under his spell.

LEAVING HOME is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult. His parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing abattoirs and keeping a pathologically clean and tidy house. At least he had the consolations of The Weetabix Solar System Wallchart, walnut whips and the occasional Babycham. Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, this is a book about being different and seeing the world differently. It’s about being a cartoonist and a care assistant. It’s about family. It’s about knickerbocker glories and heart surgery, about papier mâché and mental breakdown and great white sharks. It’s about how art, in all its varied forms, provides a way of understanding and coming to terms with the mess of human life.

Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, “she is our only truly canonical Black female writer --- and her work is highly complex.” In ON MORRISON, Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and a professor who teaches a course on Morrison to illuminate her masterful experiments with literary form. This is Morrison as you’ve never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre --- her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry --- with contextual guidance and original close readings.

In 1902, Morris and Rose Michtom invented the Teddy Bear --- bound by clothing scraps, stuffed with sawdust, and given button eyes with a sad, longing expression --- in the back room of their Brooklyn candy store. Together they launched the Ideal Toy Corporation, joining a set of other poor, first-generation Jewish toymakers: the Hassenfeld brothers of Hasbro, Ruth Moskowicz and Elliot Handler of Mattel, and Joshua Lionel Cowan of Lionel Trains. From Barbie and G.I. Joe to Popeye, Superman and Mr. Potato Head, PLAYMAKERS reveals how the toy industry created the idealized American childhood: an enchanted world, full of wild creatures and eternal struggles between good and evil, with endless realms of fantasy and beauty. 

For Marco and Mia, Sasha and Theo, Richie and Adam, the one constant in life after college together has been change. New jobs. New cities. New spouses. New children. Through it all, one thing they thought would always stay the same is their friendship. But time has a way of breaking even the strongest bonds, and testing what we thought we knew. From East Village apartment parties and disastrous destination weddings, to 40th birthdays and suburban backyard barbecues, SO OLD, SO YOUNG is a story about the growing pains of the Millennial generation, and a celebration of how love can shift, stumble and grow into something bigger than we ever could have imagined.

Alexandria “Alix” Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: Unlike people, books will never let you down. Working three dead-end jobs to make ends meet and knowing that college is a pipe dream, Alix takes nightly refuge in the high-vaulted reading room at the Boston Public Library, escaping into her favorite fantasy novels and dreaming of far-off lands. Until the day she stumbles through a hidden door and meets the Librarian: the ageless, acerbic guardian of a hidden library where the desperate and the lost escape to new lives...inside their favorite books. The Librarian takes a dazzled Alix under her wing, but before she can escape into the pages of her new life, a shadowy enemy emerges to threaten everyone the Astral Library has ever helped protect.

There have long been whispers, coming from the castle; from the village square; from the dark woods. The great lady --- a countess, from one of Europe's oldest families --- is a vicious killer. When the king's men force their way into her manor house, she is caught murdering yet another of her maids. She is walled up in a tower and never seen again, except in the uppermost barred window, where she curses all those who dared speak up against her. Told and retold in many languages, the legend of the Blood Countess has consumed cultural imaginations around the world. But despite claims that Elizabeth Bathory tortured and killed as many as 650 girls, some have wondered if the Countess was herself a victim --- of one of the most successful disinformation campaigns known to history. So was Elizabeth Bathory a monster, a victim, or a bit of both?

Former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone is called to Sweden when the younger sister of King Wilhelm I is kidnapped. The ransom demand? Hand over an 800-year-old book, the Codex Gigas --- the largest illuminated medieval manuscript in the world. Claimed as war loot from Bohemia in 1648, it’s been kept in Stockholm for nearly 400 years. Along the way, it also acquired another more mysterious moniker: The Devil’s Bible. Now the Czech Republic wants the codex back, and Sweden has agreed to return it, but forces are at work to stop that deal from happening. The likely instigator? Russia. Which is also at the top of the list for possible kidnappers. It’s up to Cotton and Cassiopeia Vitt to locate the king’s sister, secure the codex and thwart the Russians. Yet nothing is as it seems.

Court Gentry’s current family operates out of an office park in Norfolk, Virginia. The Ghost Town is an off-the-books direct action team run by Matt Hanley, former CIA Deputy Director. They take on the jobs the Agency needs handled “discretely.” Somewhere at the top of the US Intelligence apparatus, security experts and intelligence operations worldwide are threatened. It starts with a blown safe house in Tunis. Then Court himself barely escapes from an ambush in the jungles of Nicaragua. Now key members of the U.S. counterintelligence community are being assassinated in their own neighborhoods. With the feds compromised, it’s up to Court and his team to stop the hit squads. But eliminating professional kill teams may be the least of the Gray Man’s worries when he finds himself targeted by the legendary assassin codenamed Whetstone.

Nell Masters is certain that someone is following her. The hairs on the back of her neck rise when she travels to and from work, there are silent calls to her office, and a huge bouquet of flowers arrives without a card. Nell has a secret that she’s hiding from everyone in her life, including her new partner, Alex. But Alex also has secrets of his own. Fourteen years earlier, when Nell went by the name Elle Nugent, she witnessed a student, Bryony Sanders, getting into a stranger’s car. When Bryony was found murdered, Elle became obsessed with finding the person responsible. She was convinced she knew who it was, and her fixation with Brett Parker, the man she accused, led her down a dangerous path. Has someone from Nell’s past discovered her new identity? Has the stalker become the stalked? Or is there something even more deadly at play?

In the farm country outside Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan --- a border town where life moves slow and dreams run fast --- most kids want out. Not Everett Lindt. He’s set on staying put, rebuilding his family’s sheep farm, and carving a future from the land he loves. Then he meets Mary, a new girl in town with restless energy and bigger plans. When their relationship reaches a crossroads, Everett sees a life together. Mary, however, is desperate to find a way out. Together, they make an impulsive choice --- one that could change everything.

Viveca Stevenson has it all: a handsome and successful husband, an adorable 10-year-old son, and a coastal dream house in Greenwich, Connecticut. She has a solid group of girlfriends and is content with the afterglow of the film career she’s left behind. But when a threatening letter arrives --- from a man she does not remember --- it cracks open a part of her past she thought was buried for good. A terrifying chain of events is set in motion, forcing Viveca to confront what happened on a shattering Halloween night in high school when she had a different name, a different face and a different voice. Who is the man contacting her now, and was he really the best boy on her most famous film, Misty? Why can’t she remember him --- or that night?

Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class and region --- from New England to Florida to California --- these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans’ dark and light angels. “In every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death,“ one character tells us. Among those we see caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling, a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult, a mother blinded by the loss of her family, and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by the double edges of other peoples’ good intentions, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can.