Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd to apply for a job. Allured by the smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap, Darkshire was soon unteetering stacks of first editions and placating the store’s resident ghost (the late Mr. Sotheran, hit by a tram). A novice in this ancient, potentially haunted establishment, Darkshire describes Sotheran’s brushes with history (Dickens, the Titanic), its joyous disorganization, and the unspoken rules of its gleefully old-fashioned staff. As Darkshire gains confidence and experience, he shares trivia about ancient editions and explores the strange space that books occupy in our lives --- where old books often have strong sentimental value, but rarely a commercial one.

After a long and arduous COVID-19 quarantine, Serge A. Storms is fully vaccinated and ready to hit the road. Along with his condo neighbors, he cooks up a wild plan to celebrate in true Serge fashion: each week, they rent a shuttle van and head out for funky Florida road trips and some serious revelry. Meanwhile, a CIA revenge operation down in Honduras goes very, very wrong. The local liaison hired to help with the mission is the only witness to the disaster, and the CIA quickly sets a black ops contractor on his trail to eliminate him. Forced to flee his home country, the witness lands in Miami with a new identity and passport. But the CIA is still on his tail, pushing him further and further south to the Florida Keys, where he runs into Serge’s convoy.

As a “black-bag” publicist tasked not with letting the good news out but keeping the bad news in, Mae Pruett works for one of LA’s most powerful and sought-after crisis PR firms, at the center of a sprawling web of lawyers, PR flaks and private security firms she calls “The Beast.” After her boss is gunned down in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel in a random attack, Mae takes it upon herself to investigate and runs headfirst into The Beast’s lawless machinations and the twisted systems it exists to perpetuate. It takes her on a roving neon joyride through a Los Angeles full of influencers pumped full of pills and fillers; sprawling mansions footsteps away from sprawling homeless encampments; crooked cops; and mysterious wrecking crews in the middle of the night.

Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, “Samuel Adams was the man.” John Adams thought his cousin was “the most sagacious politician” of all. With high-minded ideals and bare-knuckle tactics, Adams led what could be called the greatest campaign of civil resistance in American history. Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Stacy Schiff returns Adams to his seat of glory, introducing us to the shrewd, eloquent and intensely disciplined man who supplied the moral backbone of the American Revolution.

During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend. But as Ben Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. PRISONERS OF THE CASTLE traces the war’s arc from within Colditz’s stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler’s war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate at the hands of the Nazis.

Beginning with the Roman army’s first recorded encounter with the Gauls and ending in the era of Emmanuel Macron, FRANCE takes readers on an endlessly entertaining journey through French history. Robb’s own adventures and discoveries while living, working and traveling in France connect this tour through space and time with on-the-ground experience. There are scenes of wars and revolutions from the plains of Provence to the slums and boulevards of Paris. Robb conveys with wit and precision what it felt like to look over the shoulder of a young Louis XIV as he planned the vast garden of Versailles, and the dangerous thrill of having a ringside seat at the French Revolution.

Tennent “Pete” Bagley was once a rising star in America’s spy aristocracy. But the star that burned so brightly exploded when Bagley --- who suspected a mole had burrowed deep into the agency’s core --- was believed himself to be the mole. After a year-long investigation, Bagley was finally exonerated, but the accusations tarnished his reputation and tainted his career. When Bagley’s daughter Christina, a CIA analyst, married another intelligence officer who was the son of the man who had played a key role in the investigation into Bagley, it caused a painful rift between the two. But then came former CIA officer John Paisley’s strange death. Pete launches his own investigation that takes him deep into his own past and his own longtime hunt for a mole.

Earl Thomas, a straight-laced taxman with his fair share of police encounters, is the begrudging foreperson in a high-stakes trial in Miami. Laura Hurtado-Perez is a physician whose unassuming manner conceals a private pain. Joseph Cole is the founder of his local neighborhood watch, unduly obsessed with the families around him. Along with four others, these jurors of varying ages and walks of life whose paths likely never would have crossed otherwise must come together to make one of the most important decisions of their lives.

Intelligence operative Hayley Chill is pursing the truth about her father’s mysterious fate, which government officials seem determined to hide from her. But when she stumbles upon a ciphered document under the floorboards of her father’s house, it becomes impossible to ignore the questions about his death. Was it suicide, or was it murder, designed to protect a deeper secret? She fears that what she has discovered may be connected to current rumors of a dark conspiracy, one that no one will substantiate. With permission from her handler to probe deeper, Hayley is led into a terrifying subculture of white supremacy within the United States military. As her investigation intensifies, she uncovers an expansive conspiracy to bring about the secession of several states from the country.

Simon Riske is toasting the record hundred-million-dollar sale of a rare 1963 Ferrari that he restored himself. The buyer is a sophisticated French woman named Sylvie Bettencourt. Riske enjoys her company until her bodyguard storms in, claiming the vehicle is a fake. Riske must prove the car is the real thing…or else. Meanwhile, Carl Bildt, banker to the rich and nefarious, is killed by a powerful car bomb, moments before he can deliver evidence to the authorities. His daughter, Anna, rushes to Switzerland to investigate her father’s violent death. As Riske strives to prove the Ferrari’s authenticity and look deeper into Sylvie’s past, he crosses paths with Anna and discovers they have an enemy in common.