Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has come almost full circle, returning to Virginia as the chief medical examiner, the state where she launched her storied career. Just weeks on the job, she’s called to a scene by railroad tracks where a woman’s body has been shockingly displayed, her throat cut down to the spine. At the same time, a catastrophe occurs in a top-secret laboratory in outer space, endangering at least two scientists aboard. Appointed to the highly classified Doomsday Commission that specializes in sensitive national security cases, Scarpetta is summoned to the White House and tasked with finding out exactly what happened. But even as she works the first potential crime scene in space remotely, an apparent serial killer strikes again very close to home.

Colorful Christmas lights dapple the family homes in the idyllic lakeside town of Sweet Haven when Jennifer Dean, a young librarian at the local elementary school, is brutally murdered. There are witnesses, and her boyfriend, Travis Blake, confesses to the crime…but something doesn’t quite add up. Blake is a third-generation Army Ranger, awarded the Silver Star for his heroism in Afghanistan. How could a beloved son of this tight-knit burgh commit such a grisly deed? In steps Cameron Winter, a rugged and lonesome English professor haunted by the ghosts of his own Christmas past, whose former lover asks him to prove Blake innocent. If he can solve this small-town mystery, just maybe he can find peace from his inner demons as well.

Jane Whitefield helps people disappear. Fearing for their lives, fleeing dangerous situations, her clients come to her when they need to vanish completely. And when people are desperate enough to need her services, they come to the old house in rural western New York where Jane was raised to begin their escape. It’s there that, one spring night, Jane finds a young woman fresh from LA. After she cheated on her boyfriend, he dragged her to the home of the offending man and made her watch as he killed him. She testified against the boyfriend, but a bribed jury acquitted him, and now he’s free and trying to find and kill her. Jane agrees to help, but the boyfriend has some new friends: members of a Russian organized crime brotherhood.

Four years have passed since Cecilia Karlsson disappeared from the island of Gräsö in Roslagen. When Ann Lindell receives a tip that she has been seen alive, she cannot help getting involved, even though she is no longer with the police. The black sheep of the island, Nils Lindberg, has never forgotten Cecilia Karlsson, with whom he was in love as a teenager. He may not be completely sober all the time, but he has no doubt of what he saw out on the bay just before Cecilia disappeared. While Ann struggles to put the jigsaw puzzle together, she is trying to establish herself in her new life together with her lover, Edvard. At the same time, someone is hiding in a cottage in a remote part of the island. Someone who is looking for revenge.

A woman wakes up in the morning to find that someone has picked her apartment’s supposedly impregnable door lock and rearranged personal items. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are brought in to investigate and soon learn that the sociopathic intruder, who calls himself "the Locksmith,” can break through any lock or security system ever devised. With more victims on the horizon, Rhyme, Sachs and their stable of associates must discover his true mission. Their hunt is interrupted when an internal investigation in the police force uncovers what seems to be a crucial mistake in one of Rhyme's previous cases. He is fired as a consultant for the NYPD and must risk jail if he investigates the Locksmith case in secret.

A boy decides to become a writer when he discovers that his creative gifts capture the attentions of an aloof young beauty who has stolen his heart. A labyrinth maker flees Constantinople to a plague-ridden Barcelona, with plans for building a library impervious to the destruction of time. A strange gentleman tempts Cervantes to write a book like no other, each page of which could prolong the life of the woman he loves. And a brilliant Catalan architect named Antoni Gaudí reluctantly agrees to cross the ocean to New York, a voyage that will determine the fate of an unfinished masterpiece. Carlos Ruiz Zafón conceived of this collection of stories as an appreciation to the countless readers who joined him on the extraordinary journey that began with THE SHADOW OF THE WIND.

Dr. Alex Cross and Detective John Sampson venture into the rugged Montana wilderness --- where they will be the prey. They’re not on the job, but on a personal mission. Until they’re attacked by two rival teams of assassins, controlled by the same mastermind who has stalked Alex and his family for years. Darkness falls. The river churns into rapids. Shots ring out through the forest. No backup. No way out. Fear no evil.

South Korea, 1970s: Sergeant First Class Cecil B. Harvey has long been a friend (willing or unwilling) to Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom. So when he goes missing with a top-secret document that even a glance at could get an officer court-martialed, Sueño and Bascom take it upon themselves to find him. Meanwhile, Overseas Observer reporter Katie Byrd Worthington is back to make life difficult for top Army brass. When she lands in a Korean jail cell, Sueño and Bascom are sent to get her out --- and negotiate against the publication of an incriminating story about the mistreatment of women in the military that could land important officials in hot water. But what they learn will make it hard for them to stay silent.

“Every catastrophe begins with a little problem that doesn’t get fixed.” So says Pauline Green, president of the United States, in Ken Follett’s nerve-racking drama of international tension. A shrinking oasis in the Sahara Desert; a stolen US Army drone; an uninhabited Japanese island; and one country’s secret stash of deadly chemical poisons --- all these play roles in a relentlessly escalating crisis. Struggling to prevent the outbreak of world war are a young woman intelligence officer; a spy working undercover with jihadists; a brilliant Chinese spymaster; and Pauline herself, beleaguered by a populist rival for the next presidential election.

After leaving her position with Charlotte and Thomas Pitt to get married, Gracie thought her days as a maid were behind her. But when her good friend’s daughter, Millie, turns up on her doorstep just before the holidays, frantic because things are going missing from the kitchen in the household she serves, Gracie knows she has to find out what is happening. Millie can’t risk being accused of theft and getting thrown out on the street, with no character references for a new position. So Gracie takes on Millie’s job herself, claiming Millie is sick and needs a few days to recuperate. She soon begins to realize that Granny is suffering from neglect --- and rather than helping her, the husband and wife have decided she isn’t dying fast enough.