SOMEWHERE, A BOY AND A BEAR tells the remarkable story of A. A. Milne, a playwright, a bestselling crime writer, a poet, a polemicist, a humorist, and the man who created Winnie-the-Pooh. Gyles Brandreth explores Winnie-the-Pooh, a bear beloved by millions: his genesis, his life across a hundred years, his special philosophy, and the reasons for his worldwide popularity. Brandreth’s book is also the intimate biography of three generations of the fascinating and troubled Milne family, which knew fame and fortune, despising both for a time, but a family that ultimately found a profound reason to be grateful for the riches Pooh brought them.

July 1950: Mick Mulligan has just hung out his shingle as a private investigator in New York’s sweaty Hell’s Kitchen. A former Hollywood cartoonist who was blacklisted during a communist witch hunt, Mick is in need of a paying gig to make his child support payments. But maybe not this gig. Last year, universally reviled cab company owner Irwin Johnson was murdered. One of his drivers, an African American Communist Party member named Harold Williams, was arrested, tried and found guilty, despite scant evidence. Now his execution date is two weeks away. New York City labor leader Duke Rogowski asks Mick to find fresh evidence that might buy Harold a stay of execution. Lots of people might have wanted Irwin dead, but no one has any reason to help Mick exonerate Harold. Yet Mick can’t abandon a potentially innocent man to the electric chair. Can he pull off a miracle?

After Libération, spring 1945: Seventeen-year-old Huguette Faure is a survivor. The war has taken everything from her --- both her parents and her sense of safety. Now, pregnant and on the lam, she cannot return to her childhood home in Paris. Forced to reinvent herself, she must outrun her father’s enemies, who want her dead. After narrowly avoiding jail time --- thanks to the help of a kindhearted police officer named Claude Leduc --- Huguette lands a job assisting a legendary film director. As her role develops from helping him with chores to cooking his books, she sees an opportunity to break free from the ghosts of her past once and for all.

1963, Guatemala. The country is in turmoil, with a presidential election looming and a charismatic, left-wing ex-priest and trade union leader predicted to win. United Fruits, a giant American corporation responsible for a large percentage of the country’s GNP, is not pleased by this prospect. Neither is the CIA. Amid the uncertainty, Gabriel Dax arrives on orders from his MI6 handler Faith Green, who has tasked him with assessing the fallout from the election. Upon arrival, Gabriel meets Frank Sartorius, the local CIA agent. Despite Sartorius’ genial manner, Gabriel suspects something untrustworthy brewing under the surface. Soon, a political assassination with suspicions of Mafia involvement leads to riots. But when Green compels Gabriel to investigate some shady characters in West Berlin, it becomes clear that an even greater danger is afoot.

Birdie Keller wakes one freezing January morning to the news she’s been waiting 18 years to hear. Jimmy Maguire, the man who killed her sister, has been freed from jail. She leaves for London with a pistol and a plan: to find this man and make him pay. But every story has two sides. Jimmy can sense he’s being hunted. He knew Birdie a long time ago, in a life she’d sooner forget, and he isn’t the only one with something to hide. As the two circle each other in a heart-stopping game of cat and mouse, they plunge into a murky world of family secrets, betrayals and unsolved mysteries.

David Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner. He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale. Beneath his celebrated image, Silas is a bombastic, vindictive monster who refuses to allow his new neighbor even to make eye contact with him. Until young David wins a prestigious award for his new book. Suddenly Silas is interested --- if intensely spiteful. But soon, the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, forcing the writer into a desperate set of choices. Fate intervenes --- with shocking consequences.

December 1921: Being single and a new Chief, Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard gets the short straw at Christmastime and is called upon by Chief Superintendent Markum to go to the Kentish home of a lord recovering from an attempt on his life. In bed with a concussion, the man is convinced someone is trying to kill him after he claims he was struck by the hoof of a running horse whose rider never stopped to check on him. Struggling with his own demons from the war and misgivings about helping a man who, as a colonel, oversaw the suffering of those on the frontlines from afar, Rutledge undertakes an uneasy investigation. And as the winter holiday approaches, he becomes increasingly convinced that nothing is as it seems.

It's 11:59. And the city that never sleeps is afraid to get out of bed. A bomb explodes in a crowded New York subway station at exactly 11:59am. The next day, a second blast rips through a busy department store --- again at 11:59.  As the bombs go off with clockwork precision, the death toll climbs and businesses shut their doors as the city hunkers down in fear. NYPD Red Detectives Kylie MacDonald and Zach Jordan face their most twisted case ever, as they race against the clock in search of one man who has vowed "to destroy New York City the way it destroyed my family."

On an otherwise ordinary street in Chicago, there is a house. An abandoned house where, once upon a time, terrible things happened. The children who live on this block are told by their parents to stay away from it. But of course, children don’t listen. Jessie Campanelli dared her little brother, Paul, to go inside. But unlike all the other kids who went inside that abandoned house, Paul didn’t return. His two friends, Jake and Richie, said that the house ate Paul. Of course, adults didn’t believe that. They thought someone kidnapped Paul or otherwise hurt him. His disappearance broke Jessie’s family apart in ways that would never be repaired. Jessie kept living on the same street where the house that ate her brother sat, crouched and waiting. And darkness seemed to spread out from that house, a darkness that was alive --- alive and hungry.

The suspense classic ALONG CAME A SPIDER introduced an unsurpassed rivalry: Detective Alex Cross versus Gary Soneji. But that wasn’t their first meeting. Police discover that Soneji kept a murder book, Profiles in Homicidal Genius, detailing his transformation from substitute teacher to hardened serial killer --- including clues that imply missteps that Alex Cross may have made as a rookie homicide detective. Now, Alex must retrace the steps of that long-ago investigation and face…the RETURN OF THE SPIDER.