Former spy Maggie Bird came to the seaside village of Purity, Maine, eager to put the past behind her after a mission went tragically wrong. These days, she’s living quietly on her chicken farm, still wary of blowback from the events that forced her early retirement. But when a body turns up in Maggie’s driveway, she knows it’s a message from former foes who haven’t forgotten her. Maggie turns to her local circle of old friends --- all retirees from the CIA --- to help uncover the truth about who is trying to kill her, and why. This “Martini Club” of former spies may be retired, but they still have a few useful skills that they’re eager to use again, if only to spice up their rather sedate new lives.

Three members of a wealthy family, along with their live-in nanny, are pulled from their burning mansion, already dead from gunshot wounds. The only survivor is a young boy whose memory of the event raises more questions than answers. The police seem happy to settle on a simple explanation and arrest the most obvious suspect, but Cameron Winter knows that obvious solutions are seldom the correct ones, and all too often they hide a darker truth. While Winter’s investigation is welcomed by many who knew the victims, the lead detective makes it clear he wants Winter not only to stop looking for answers, but to stay out of his town altogether. Winter begins to understand why as he slowly uncovers crimes and unsavory behavior that had been ignored long before the killings.

Switzerland, 1816. A volcanic eruption in Indonesia envelops the whole of Europe in ash and cloud. Amid this “year without a summer,” 18-year-old Mary Shelley and her lover, Percy Bysshe Shelley, arrive at Lake Geneva to visit Lord Byron and his companion, John Polidori. One famous evening, Byron issues a challenge to write the best ghost story. Contemplating what to write, Mary recalls another summer, when she was 14. Scotland, 1812. A guest of the Baxter family, Mary arrives in Dundee, befriending young Isabella Baxter. As their bond deepens, Mary and Isabella’s feelings for each other intensify. But someone has been watching them --- the charismatic and vaguely sinister Mr. Booth, Isabella's older brother-in-law, who may not be as benevolent as he purports to be.

1992. All across the United States, respectable, upstanding citizens are showing up dead. These deaths could be accidents, and they don’t appear to be connected --- until a fatal fall from a high-floor window attracts some unexpected attention. That attention comes from the Secretary of Defense. All of a sudden, he wants an interagency task force to investigate. And he wants Jack Reacher as the army’s representative. If Reacher gets a result, great. If not, he’s a convenient fall guy. But office politics isn’t Reacher’s thing. Three questions quickly emerge: Who’s with him, who’s against him, and will the justice he dispenses be the official kind...or his own kind?

Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool are looking forward to Christmas when they are called upon to investigate the murder of a man in a Norfolk hospital ward. Cynthia Catchpool, Edward’s mother, insists that Poirot stay with her in a crumbling mansion by the coast so they all can be together for the festive period while he solves the case. The local constabulary’s investigation failed to uncover how someone could have entered a hospital room and killed him under the noses of the staff. Cynthia’s friend, Arnold, is soon to be admitted to that same hospital, and his wife is convinced he will be the killer’s next victim, though she refuses to explain why. Meanwhile, an utterly ruthless individual has ideas about what ought to happen to Hercule Poirot.

Madeline Martin is the young owner of a thriving business, The Next Chapter Bookshop. When Harley Granger, a failed novelist turned true crime podcaster, drifts into her shop in the days before Christmas, he seems intent on digging up events that Madeline would much rather forget. She’s the only surviving victim of Evan Handy, the man who was convicted of murdering her best friend, Steph, and is suspected in the disappearance of two sisters, also good friends of Madeline’s. Since Evan Handy went to jail, three other young women have gone missing, most recently a young college dropout named Lolly. Five young women missing in the same area in a decade. Are they connected? Was Evan Handy innocent after all? Or was there someone else there that night? Someone who is still satisfying his dark appetites?

Enjoy three heart-racing thrillers from the New York Times bestselling master of suspense. In "23 ½ Lies" (with Maxine Paetro), Lindsay Boxer's estranged father is gunned down execution-style, and her investigation uncovers life-altering truths. To Rory Yates, being a Texas Ranger means absolute loyalty to the badge. But he’s put through the ultimate test when an armored car robbery suspect might be an ex-Ranger gone rogue in "Fallen Ranger" (with Andrew Bourelle). When a starving artist is paid to expose his client's cheating wife, can he paint the picture that will save his own life? Find out in "Watch Your Back" (with Loren D. Estleman).

Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play Witching Night, she finally may be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the mansion, nearly hidden outside a remote village. It’s the perfect place to develop and rehearse her play. Despite her own hesitations, Holly’s girlfriend, Nisa, agrees to join Holly in renting the house for a month, and soon a troupe of actors, each with ghosts of their own, arrive. Yet as they settle in, the house’s peculiarities are made known. All too soon, Holly and her friends find themselves at odds not just with one another, but with the house itself.

Ashley Smith, an American art student in London for her junior year, was planning on spending Christmas alone. But a last-minute invitation from fellow student Emma Chapman brings her to Starvewood Hall, the country residence of the Chapman family. Ashley is mesmerized by the cozy, firelit house, the large family, and the charming village of Clevemoor, but also by Adam Chapman, Emma’s aloof and handsome brother. But Adam is being investigated by the local police over the recent brutal slaying of a girl from the village, and there is a mysterious stranger who haunts the woodland path between Starvewood Hall and the local pub. Ashley begins to wonder what kind of story she is actually inhabiting. Over 30 years later, the events of that horrific week are revisited, along with a diary from that time.

Following a confrontation with her reclusive great-grandfather, the one-time Wizard of Oz, Rainary Ko --- the granddaughter of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West --- has re-upped in a mission to settle a few scores and right a wrong or two. Her memory and her passions reviving, Rain turns her gaze back to her native Oz. Though the Grimmerie, which she had cast into the sea, retains its arcane power over her, the lover she left behind in Oz proves no less haunting. Traveling companions and arrivistes can befuddle a young witch coming into her own, but Rain marshals a steely determination to stare her troubles in the eye and see who blinks first.