Coming Soon

A novelist learns that an unflattering version of herself will appear prominently --- and soon --- in her ex-husband’s debut. For a week, her life continues largely unaffected by the news --- she cooks, runs, teaches, entertains --- but the morning after baking mac and cheese from scratch for her nephew’s sixth birthday, she wakes up changed. The contentment she’s long enjoyed is gone. In its place: nothing. A remarkably ridiculous midlife crisis ensues, featuring a talking cat and a game called Dead Body.

Quincy Monroe is a woman in STEM with a PhD in atmospheric sciences, is the host of a successful online weather show, and has one million followers on her meteorology Instagram. And with a new job opportunity, nothing can derail her success. Except for the ill-timed arrival of Sebastian Dunn. Sebastian is her best friend’s brother, her longtime academic and professional rival, and a flashy TV weatherman from New York City who everyone swoons over. Everyone but Quincy.. Over a scorching Florida summer and record-breaking hurricane season, Sebastian and Quincy are forced into close proximity. Setting aside their grudges to chase storms and stay alive is one thing. But can they weather the inevitable collision of their hearts?

Frances believes she has found a ticket to paradise when a wealthy couple hires her for the summer as their mother’s helper at their lakefront summer home in Maine. Best of all, she gets to spend the summer with Forrest Emerson, her father's charismatic childhood friend who escaped their neighborhood when he married into money. But below the glittering surface of Lake Catherine, nothing is what it seems. When Forrest’s wife, Regina, pulls Frances into her private obsession, the girl finds herself witness to the intimate secrets of adult lives. As the summer heat builds, so do the tensions within Wonderland’s walls. By Labor Day, a death will shatter the seemingly perfect family, leaving Frances to question everything she thought she knew about privilege, power and the price of belonging.

After suffering through her first year of graduate school at Columbia following her senator father’s death, Betsy Whiting is hoping to spend the summer with her boyfriend…and hopefully end the summer as his fiancée. Instead, her mother --- a longtime feminist and leader in the women’s movement --- calls Betsy and her sisters back home to Martha’s Vineyard, announcing that they need to sell their beloved summer house to pay off their father’s debts. When Betsy arrives on the island a week later, she must reckon with her strained familial relationships, a long-ago forbidden romance, and the complicated legacy of her parents, who divided the family even as they did good for the world.

Teenage best friends Jackie and Kayla can sell anything. Alongside their fathers, they work at a pawn shop in Cherry Beach, Florida, handling everything from luxury jewelry to chainsaws and more. When the girls learn that Kayla’s family can’t afford a private school opportunity that Jackie’s can, Jackie becomes distraught about losing her best friend. With their sharp minds but youthful lack of foresight, they scheme a way to embezzle money from the pawn shop. As the hot Florida summer unfolds, the girls steal thousands of dollars from the shop. But when their heist is discovered, Jackie is faced with a situation that no amount of negotiating or charisma can fix.

Skwerl, once an elite member of the CIA's paramilitary unit, was cast out after a raid gone wrong in Afghanistan. Big Cheese Aziz, a former Afghan pilot of legendary skill, now works the graveyard shift at a gas station. Recruited into a shadowy network of "sheepdogs," they embark on a mission to repossess a multi-million-dollar private jet stranded on a remote African airfield. But as they wind through a labyrinth of lies and hidden agendas, they discover that nothing is as it seems. Their contact vanishes, their handler's motives are suspect, and the true source of their payday remains a mystery. With the stakes skyrocketing and the women in their lives drawn into the fray, this unlikely spy duo find themselves deep in the underbelly of modern war and intelligence.

In 1919, in Newfoundland, four teams of aviators came from Britain to compete in “the Big Hop”: an audacious race to be the first to fly, nonstop, across the Atlantic Ocean. One pair of competitors was forced to abandon the journey halfway, and two pairs never made it into the air. Only one team, after a death-defying 16-hour flight, made it to Ireland. Celebrated on both continents, the transatlantic contest offered a surge of inspiration --- and a welcome distraction --- to a public reeling from the Great War and the influenza pandemic. But the seven airmen who made the attempt were quickly forgotten, their achievement overshadowed by the solo Atlantic flights of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart years later. In THE BIG HOP, David Rooney grants the pioneering aviators of 1919 the spotlight they deserve.

Forensic specialist Laughton Rees' youthful indiscretions led to the birth of her daughter, Gracie. But when a new murder case she is working unexpectedly leads to Gracie’s father turning up in their lives again, Laughton is automatically wary. Shelby Facer is a dangerous man, formerly imprisoned for his involvement in an international drug trafficking ring. But when he claims he can identify the victim, she can't turn down his help. The headless body that has been discovered in the river Thames seems to belong to a man who was part of a highly secretive smuggling ring Shelby was involved with during his and Laughton’s youth --- which Laughton’s father was investigating before he died. Laughton throws herself into her father’s old files to try to trace the connections between past and present.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor, is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER is told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits.

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, 19-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family and a community on the brink.

Terlu Perna broke the law because she was lonely. She cast a spell and created a magically sentient spider plant. As punishment, she was turned into a wooden statue and tucked away into an alcove in the North Reading Room of the Great Library of Alyssium. This should have been the end of her story. Yet one day, Terlu wakes in the cold of winter on a nearly deserted island full of hundreds of magical greenhouses. The only other human on the island is Yarrow, a grumpy gardener who offers her a place to sleep and clean clothes. As she grows closer with him, she learns that the magic that sustains the greenhouses is failing --- causing the death of everything within them. Assisted by Yarrow and a sentient rose, Terlu must unravel the secrets of a long-dead sorcerer if she wants to save the island --- and have a fresh chance at happiness and love.

Laura is a local Dominican woman who has risen through the ranks to become manager at the Grand Paloma Resort. Her idea to pair a “platinum” guest with their own resort employee to attend to their every whim has been wildly successful. If only her younger sister, Elena, could get with the program. Elena has tried to live up to her sister’s expectations, but to escape the drudgery of waiting on rich tourists, she’s become increasingly dependent on pills and partying. Now, after an accident, a child left in her charge is believed dead, and Elena knows she'll be held responsible. When Elena runs into the child’s father, he offers her an obscene amount of money for private time with two young local girls. Elena pockets the cash to fund her escape and prays she’s gotten the girls out of harm’s way. But then the girls are reported missing.

It’s New Year’s Day in Australia, and the life Lexi Villiers has carefully built is working out nicely. She’s in the second year of her medical residency, she lives on a beautiful farm with her two best friends, Finn and Jack, and she’s about to finally become more than friendly with Jack --- when a helicopter abruptly lands. Out steps her grandmother’s right-hand man with the tragic news that her father and older brother have been killed in a skiing accident. Lexi’s grandmother happens to be the Queen of England, and Lexi must now accept the reality that she is suddenly next in line for the throne --- a role she has publicly disavowed. Returning to London as the heir apparent Princess Alexandrina, Lexi is greeted by a skeptical public not ready to forgive her defection, a grieving sister-in-law harboring an explosive secret, and a scheming uncle determined to claim the throne himself.

An apparent suicide in a London townhouse uncannily mirrors a similar incident from 25 years ago, prompting Scotland Yard's George Flint to delve deep into the past in search of the solution to a long-forgotten mystery. Meanwhile, Joseph Spector travels with a coach party through the rainy English countryside to visit an allegedly haunted house on a lonely island called Devil’s Neck. The visitors hold a seance to conjure the spirit of a long-dead soldier, but a storm causes them to be stranded in the haunted house. Before long, the guests begin to die one by one, and it seems that the only possible culprit is the phantom soldier. Flint's and Spector's investigations are in fact closely linked, but it is only when the duo are reunited at the storm-lashed Devil's Neck that the truth is finally revealed.

It’s the Crime of the Decade when glamorous Georgia Cartwright, who was adopted as a newborn, is accused of killing the biological daughter of her wealthy, Southern family. Georgia is locked in a psychiatric institution where the most violent offenders are held while she awaits trial. The only words she whispers when her estranged twin sister, Amanda, visits are “I didn’t do it. You’ve got to get me out of here.” Amanda doesn't trust Georgia, but she can't abandon her in a place so eerie and menacing that it seems to exist in another dimension. Is Georgia the victim of a powerful family that's so depraved murder is the least of their crimes? Or is Amanda being led down a path of madness into the web of a master manipulator?

No one is more sympathetic than a mother whose child faces a life-threatening illness. But what if the mother is the cause of the illness? What if the sympathy is the point? Munchausen by proxy (MBP) has fascinated and horrified both professionals and the general public since this disturbing form of child abuse was first identified. But even as the public has been captivated by these tales of abuse and deception, there remains widespread misinformation and confusion about MBP. Are these mothers unfeeling psychopaths, or sick women who need help? And how can we protect the children whose lives are at stake? THE MOTHER NEXT DOOR offers a groundbreaking look at MBP from an unlikely duo: a Seattle novelist whose own family was torn apart by it, and the Texas detective who has worked on more medical child abuse cases than anyone in the nation.

Meg Gregory never wanted to return to Tuskin, the small Georgia town in which she grew up. But after her divorce left her wounded, she knew she had to quit running. Now, years later, Meg is bent on hiding from the memories that haunt her. Because she skipped town for a reason, and that reason runs deep. But when Meg's unassuming granddaughter, Lucy, is suddenly charged with the murder of her boyfriend, everything changes. Meg knows Lucy couldn't have done it. As she fights for Lucy's innocence, memories from the past threaten to break free, and she's left to contemplate a different murder, a different dead boy, a different summer under the hot Georgia sun. And soon enough, Meg isn't quite sure what is memory and who is innocent.

Six friends reunite in London to celebrate the life of their recently deceased ex-employer, a professor who brought them together in 1999 to help build a dating website based on psychological testing. But what is meant to be a night of bittersweet nostalgia soon becomes a twisted and deadly game. The old friends are given an ultimatum: reveal their darkest secrets to the group or pick each other off one by one. It soon becomes clear that their current predicament is related to their shared past. The love questionnaire they helped develop in 1999 for the dating site was also turned into a tool for weeding out psychopaths: The Wasp Trap. This experiment and the other tragic events of that summer long ago may help reveal the truth behind a killer hiding in plain sight.

When Rachel Nardelli finds out that her childhood rival, Alison Petrucci, is found dead in Pleasant Pond, the same place the two girls had first said goodbye to each other back in eighth grade, the town of Waterbury is outraged by the fear of losing one of their own --- the heir to Maine’s largest construction company. But it’s a little more complicated for Rachel. She saw Alison the night she died. Callous, she said something she shouldn’t have. She stirred up the past. The next morning, Alison was gone. Plagued by the complicated memories around Alison, Rachel joins her journalism crew to investigate the murder. But as she revisits their fraught relationship, she falls into a web of cruelties that threaten to undo everything she understood about her past.

Welcome to North Falls, a small town where everyone knows everyone. Or so they think. Until the night of the fireworks. When two teenage girls vanish, and the town ignites. For Officer Emmy Clifton, it’s personal. She turned away when her best friend's daughter needed help --- and now she must bring her home. But as Emmy combs through the puzzle the girls left behind, she realizes she never really knew them. Nobody did. Every teenage girl has secrets. But who would kill for them? And what else is the town hiding?

After an accident that nearly kills her, Emily and her husband, Freddie, move from London to a beautiful Dartmoor country house called Larkin Lodge. The house is gorgeous and striking, but something about it feels deeply wrong to Emily. Old boards creak at night, fires go out, and books fall from the shelves. But these things happen only when Emily is alone. Her postsepsis condition can cause hallucinatory side effects, which means she can’t fully trust her own senses. Although Freddie doesn’t notice anything odd, Emily starts to believe that the house is being haunted by someone who was murdered in it. As bizarre events pile up and her marriage starts to crumble, Emily becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about Larkin Lodge. But if the house has secrets, so do Emily and Freddie.

A year ago, Elle made a deal with the devil to save her sister. Now, they live on a desolate spit of land beyond Halifax harbor. Elle, as lighthouse keeper, steers unsuspecting sailors to their destruction. Those are the terms of her bargain. Liney need never know the cost. Her safety is worth every drop of blood. But a sinner's pact is not so simple. When the devil returns, demanding more --- more shipwrecks, no survivors --- Elle knows what she must do to keep Liney safe. Then a woman washes ashore. Is she a soul to be sacrificed, or part of a darker design? As Liney and the stranger grow closer, Elle faces an impossible choice: kill, and break Liney's heart, or forfeit her own soul.

In “Machine City,” a college student’s chance role in a friend’s movie blurs the line between his character and his true self. (Is he a robot?) In “Slide to Unlock,” a man comes to terms with his life via the passwords he struggles to remember in extremis. (What’s his mom’s name backward?) And in “Weird Menace,” a director and faded movie star gab about science fiction, bad costume choices and lost loves on a commentary track for a B-film from the ’80s that neither remembers all that well. In Ed Park’s utterly original collection, characters bemoan their fleeting youth, focus on their breathing, meet cute, break up, write book reviews, translate ancient glyphs, bid on stuff online, whale watch, and once in a while find solace in the sublime.

In the New Mexico badlands, the skeleton of a woman is found --- and the case is assigned to FBI Agent Corrie Swanson. The victim walked into the desert, shedding clothes as she went, and died in agony of heatstroke and thirst. Two rare artifacts are found clutched in her bony hands --- lightning stones used by the ancient Chaco people to summon the gods. Is it suicide or…sacrifice? Agent Swanson brings in archaeologist Nora Kelly to investigate. When a second body is found --- exactly like the other --- the two realize the case runs deeper than they imagined. As Corrie and Nora pursue their investigation into remote canyons, haunted ruins and long-lost rituals, they find themselves confronting a dark power that, disturbed from its long slumber, threatens to exact an unspeakable price.

Mason, a Gen Z adrenaline junkie, and Mann, an ex-con, ex-actress and lawyer turned sleuth, have already solved one murder together. Now they face a second crime that’s way too close to home. Alexa Rousso keeps having accidents, and no one but her thinks it’s a coincidence. Could her checkered past be coming back to get her? Mason and Mann’s investigation takes them to the Bay Area, the Central Coast, and --- of course --- the hippest spots in Los Angeles. Will the Berkeley boho vibe convert Mann from vintage couture? Will the wine snobs of Ojai drive Mason to drink (or to vinicide, which isn’t even a thing)? More importantly, will they solve the mystery before the murderer’s sights settle on the detectives themselves. Or will this new challenge also be their last?