As beautiful as it may be, their friends’ country house is not where Lady Vespasia wishes to spend Christmas with her new husband, Victor Narraway, former head of the London Special Branch. As tensions grow, the young and beautiful Iris Watson-Watt becomes the center of several men’s focus. Unbeknownst to Vespasia, Iris carries a sensitive package that she must pass to Victor in the hope of unmasking a British traitor. While Victor plots his moves, he is reminded of a similar case from 20 years before, when a young Frenchwoman also carried a clandestine message --- one that resulted in her still-unsolved murder. Victor has always been tormented by his failure to protect her, and now he must act fast before history repeats itself.

FBI Agent Atlee Pine's life was never the same after her twin sister, Mercy, was kidnapped --- and likely killed --- 30 years ago. After a lifetime of torturous uncertainty, Atlee's unresolved anger finally gets the better of her on the job, and she finds she has to deal with the demons of her past if she wants to remain with the FBI. Atlee and her assistant, Carol Blum, head back to Atlee's rural hometown in Georgia to see what they can uncover about the traumatic night Mercy was taken and Pine was almost killed. But soon after Atlee begins her investigation, a local woman is found ritualistically murdered, her face covered with a wedding veil --- and the first killing is quickly followed by a second bizarre murder.

1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artifacts --- coins, fragments of glass, human bones --- which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to his death? Fairfax becomes determined to discover the truth. Over the course of the next six days, everything he believes --- about himself, his faith and the history of his world --- will be tested to destruction.

When the CIA realizes that the identities of three American spies in Brazil have been compromised, they turn to Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon to rescue the agents. What seems like a routine operation turns out to be a trap designed by Cabrillo's greatest enemy, a man driven by hate to seek the ultimate revenge. At the heart of the plot is a state-of-the-art ship that is identical to the Oregon: same weaponry, same technology, same ability to evade capture. The crew of the Oregon must piece together a series of disturbing events, including the mysterious sinking of a nuclear attack submarine and the possible discovery of a WWII-era weapon that was thought to be lost in the jungles of Brazil, in the ultimate game of cat and mouse.

In ACID FOR THE CHILDREN, Flea takes readers on a deeply personal and revealing tour of his formative years. Through hilarious anecdotes, poetical meditations and occasional flights of fantasy, the iconic bassist and co-founder of the Red Hot Chili Peppers deftly chronicles the experiences that forged him as an artist, a musician and a young man. His dreamy, jazz-inflected prose makes the Los Angeles of the 1970s and ’80s come to gritty, glorious life. It is here that young Flea, looking to escape a turbulent home, found family in a community of musicians, artists and junkies who also lived on the fringe. He spent most of his time partying and committing petty crimes. But it was in music where he found a higher meaning, a place to channel his frustration, loneliness and love.

On vacation from London on the beautiful Italian coast, 28-year-old Elena Standish and her older sister, Margot, have finally been able to move on from the lasting trauma of the Great War, in which the newly married Margot lost her husband and the sisters their beloved brother. Touring with her camera in hand, Elena has found new inspiration in the striking Italian landscape, and she’s met an equally striking man named Ian. When Ian has to leave unexpectedly, Elena finds she’s not ready to part from him, and the two share a spontaneous train trip home to England. But a shocking sequence of events disrupts their itinerary, forcing Elena to personally deliver a message to Berlin on Ian’s behalf, one that could change the fate of Europe.

Why do random Jewish holidays keep springing up unexpectedly? Why are yarmulkes round? Who was the first Jewish comedian? What's "Christian humor," and have you ever even heard of that phrase? Who is "the Golem," and who do you want it to beat up? These baffling questions and many more are answered by comedy legends Dave Barry, Adam Mansbach and Alan Zweibel, two-thirds of whom are Jewish. In A FIELD GUIDE TO THE JEWISH PEOPLE, the authors dissect every holiday, rite of passage and tradition, unravel a long and complicated history, and tackle the tough questions that have plagued Jews and non-Jews alike for centuries.

Sister Bess Crawford, who has been working with the severely wounded in England in the wake of the Great War, is asked to carry out a personal mission in Paris for a Matron at the London headquarters of The Queen Alexandra’s. When she locates Lawrence Minton, she finds a bitter and disturbed officer who is well on his way toward an addiction to opiates. He tells her that he doesn’t care if he lives or dies, as long as he can find oblivion. But what has changed him? What is it that haunts him? He can’t confide in Bess, because the truth is so deeply buried in his mind that he can only relive it in nightmares. The officers who had shared a house with him in Paris profess to know nothing. Still, Bess is reluctant to trust them even when they offer her their help.

“Marley was dead, to begin with,” Charles Dickens tells us at the beginning of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. But in Jon Clinch’s novel, Jacob Marley, business partner to Ebenezer Scrooge, is very much alive: a rapacious and cunning boy who grows up to be a forger, a scoundrel, and the man who will be both the making and the undoing of Scrooge. With their business interests inextricably bound together, and instincts for secrecy and greed bred in their very bones, the two men engage in a shadowy war of deception, false identities, forged documents, theft and cold-blooded murder. Marley and Scrooge are destined to clash in an unforgettable reckoning that will echo into the future and set the stage for Marley’s ghostly return.

On the eve of a top-secret space mission, Captain Calli Chase detects a tripped alarm in the tunnels deep below a NASA research center. A NASA pilot, quantum physicist and cybercrime investigator, Calli knows that a looming blizzard and government shutdown could provide the perfect cover for sabotage, with deadly consequences. As it turns out, the danger is worse than she thought. A spatter of dried blood, a missing security badge, a suspicious suicide --- a series of disturbing clues point to Calli’s twin sister, Carme, who’s been MIA for days. Desperate to halt the countdown to disaster and clear her sister’s name, Captain Chase digs deep into her vast cyber security knowledge and her painful past, probing for answers to her twin’s erratic conduct.