Out Christmas shopping one December afternoon, Jessica Gould meets the charming Dominic Lacey and impulsively agrees to go home with him for a drink. What follows is a Twelve Days of Christmas from hell as Lacey holds Jessica captive, forcing her to wear his missing wife’s gowns and eat lavish holiday meals. Each day he gifts her with one item from his twisted past --- his dead sister’s favorite toy, disturbing family photos, a box of teeth. As the days pass and the “gifts” become darker and darker, Jessica realizes that Lacey has a plan for her, and he never intends to let her go. But Jessica has a secret of her own --- a secret that may just mean she has a chance to make it out alive.

Shots ring out in the early morning hours in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. When the smoke clears, a prominent police official lies dead, leaving the city's police force scrambling for answers. Under pressure from the mayor, Alex Cross steps into the leadership vacuum to crack the case. But before Cross can make any headway, a brutal crime wave sweeps across the region. The deadly scenes share only one common thread --- the victims are all criminals. As Cross pursues an adversary who has appointed himself judge, jury and executioner, he must take the law back into his own hands before the city he's sworn to protect descends into utter chaos.

Jonah McBee has deep roots in New Orleans, but with hardly any family left, he half-heartedly is planning to enlist in the army after high school. Luz Hidalgo, an undocumented Latina and budding track star, followed her father there after Hurricane Katrina. When Jonah and Luz fall in love, it is intense, addictive and real. But everything changes when Luz discovers that she’s pregnant. In a moment of panic, her father sends Luz back to Mexico so her grandmother can help raise the baby. Devastated, Jonah decides to take a road trip with his best friend when he doesn’t hear from her. Little does Jonah know, Luz is fighting for her life.

A band of vigilante executioners roam the hot summer nights, abducting evil men who they judge unworthy of living and hanging them by the neck until dead. But do these rogue hangmen crave true justice --- or just blood? As the bodies pile up and violence explodes all over the sweltering city, DC Max Wolfe embarks on his most dangerous investigation yet, hunting a righteous gang of vigilante killers who many believe to be heroes. But before The Hanging Club is confronted, Max must learn some painful truths about the fragile line between good and evil, innocence and guilt, justice and retribution.

Fresh out of prison and fighting to keep afloat, Letty Dobesh returns to her old tricks burglarizing suites at a luxury hotel. While on the job, she overhears a man hiring a hit man to kill his wife. Letty may not be winning any morality awards, but even she has limits. Unable to go to the police, Letty sets out to derail the job, putting herself on a collision course with the killer that entangles the two of them in a dangerous, seductive relationship. GOOD BEHAVIOR comprises three interlinked novellas, which together form a novel-length portrait of Blake Crouch’s all-time favorite character creation.

The night before the Thanksgiving Day Parade, a crowd gathers on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to watch the giant balloons fill with helium and rise toward the sky. Then the festive ritual takes a terrifying turn --- a gunshot rings out, police commissioner Logan Donovan falls, and panic erupts. When the chaos clears, another crime is revealed: Donovan’s daughter, Allie, has been kidnapped. Within hours, Special Agent Eve Rossi and her handpicked team of former convicts know a lot about the kidnapper. But Eve grapples with a harrowing question: Whom should she fear more --- a vengeful man threatening innocent lives, or a charming, arrogant cop fighting to save his daughter, who may be trying to cover up his crimes?

Like fiction, cars take us into a different world: from the tony enclaves of upper crust society to the lowliest barrio; from muscle car-driving con men to hardscrabble kids on the road during the Great Depression; from a psychotic traveling salesman to a Mexican drug lord who drives a tricked-out VW Bus. We all share the roads, and our cars link us together. Including entirely new stories from Michael Connelly, C.J. Box, George Pelecanos, Diana Gabaldon, James Sallis, Ace Atkins, Luis Alberto Urrea, Sara Gran, Ben H. Winters and Joe Lansdale, THE HIGHWAY KIND is a street-level look at modern America, as seen through one of its national obsessions.

Diana Jager is a skilled surgeon and fierce campaigner via her blog about sexism in medicine. Yet it takes only hours for her life to crumble when her personal details are released on the internet as revenge for her writing. Then she meets Peter. He is kind, generous and knows nothing about her past. Within six months, they are married. Within six more, Peter is dead in a road accident. Peter's sister, Lucy, tasks rogue reporter Jack Parlabane with discovering the dark truth behind the woman the media is calling the Black Widow. Still on the mend from a turbulent divorce, Jack's investigation into matters of the heart takes him to hidden places no one should ever have to go.

Junior Bender, divorced father of one and burglar extraordinaire, finds himself stuck inside the Edgerton Mall, and not just as a last-minute shopper. The murderous Russian mobster who owns the place has decided it takes a thief to catch a thief and hires Junior --- under threat --- to solve the mall’s shoplifting problem for him. But Junior’s surveillance operation doesn’t go well: as Christmas Eve approaches, two people are dead, and it’s obvious that shoplifting is the least of the mall’s problems. To prevent further deaths, possibly including his own, Junior must confront his dread of Christmas --- both present and past.

Paco “Packy” Johnson spent a lifetime in the system --- starting in juvie at age 10, then prison for most of his adult life. But he managed to make some real friends in prison, friends who helped him get parole, a place to stay, and plans to help him adjust to a life outside prison after 17 years behind bars. But only 17 hours after he was released, he was found dead in the streets of the Bronx. James Beck can't save Packy any longer --- but he can try to find out what happened to him and exact a measure of justice. But what at first appears to be a simple, if tragic, street killing quickly becomes something much more difficult and complex.