A murder, a tragic accident, or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that somebody is dead. BIG LITTLE LIES follows Madeline, a funny and biting divorcee; Celeste, the beautiful mother of rambunctious twin boys; and Jane, a young single mother with doubts about her son. When Madeline and Celeste take Jane under their wing, no one realizes how she and her little boy will affect them all.

Houses are going up in flames, and not by accident, in a rural New Hampshire community, setting off sparks in the town and its people. This quietly passionate novel from the bestselling author of WHILE I WAS GONE and THE SENATOR’S WIFE builds up plenty of suspense about who set the fires, but the real mysteries it addresses are those of the human heart.

Joan Joyce is a young ballerina whose claim to fame is her role in helping a Nureyev-like dancer defect from the Soviet Union. Ultimately she chooses family over fouettés but, in a bittersweet, Turning Point-style twist, sees her son accede to the stellar career she never had.

Already heaped with accolades, Karen Russell is a gifted writer who likely will get plenty more for her eerie fantasy about a sleeplessness epidemic. The dystopian riffs are sharp and imaginative, but what sets the novella apart are its poignant intimations of moral doubt and personal loss: more Hamlet than Hunger Games.

Police detective Alex Morrow is serving as a witness in arms dealer Michael Brown's trial, where the case hinges on his fingerprints found on the guns he sells. When the investigation leads to a privileged Scottish lawyer who's expecting to be assassinated after a money laundering scheme goes bad, and a woman who's spying on the people who put her in jail, Morrow has her hands full. And that's before she even gets to her family issues.

Vienna is demolished by war, the city an alien landscape of ruined castles, a fractured ruling class, and people picking up the pieces. THE EXILES RETURN is the postwar story of Austria’s fallen aristocrats, unrepentant Nazis, and a culture degraded by violence. Elisabeth de Waal’s novel follows a number of exiles, each returning under very different circumstances, who must come to terms with a city in painful recovery.

For many years, Donna Leon has written essays for European publications. Collected here are the best of these: over 50 funny, charming, passionate and insightful essays that range from battles over garbage in the canals to the troubles with rehabbing Venetian real estate. She shares episodes from her life in Venice, explores her love of opera and recounts tales from in and around her country house in the mountains.

Before she became the immortal and haunting Miss Havisham of GREAT EXPECTATIONS, she was Catherine, a young woman with all of her dreams ahead of her. Sent by her father to stay with the Chadwycks, Catherine discovers elegant pastimes to remove the taint of her family's new money. When a charismatic stranger pays her attention, everything --- her heart, her future, the very Havisham name --- is vulnerable.

Jane Austen’s classic tale of two sisters --- one eminently reasonable, the other deeply romantic --- has already yielded one fine movie, three miniseries, and a parody novel awash in sea monsters. Now it’s been catapulted into the 21st century by a veteran British writer, with results that confirm its enduring fascination.

Back in the day --- 17 years ago, to be exact --- Helen Fielding and her thirtysomething, potty-mouthed, diary-keeping singleton practically invented Chick Lit. There was a sequel in 1999, then nothing. Now our desperate, ditzy heroine is back, still obsessing over her weight and still looking for love.