Phoebe is a factory girl who has come to Shanghai with the promise of a job. Gary is a country boy turned pop star who is spinning out of control. Justin is in Shanghai to expand his family’s real estate empire. He has long harbored a crush on Yinghui, who has reinvented herself as a successful Shanghai businesswoman. Yinghui is about to make a deal with Walter Chao, the five star billionaire of the novel, who has a hand in the lives of each of the characters.

The rocking motion of the train as it speeds along, the sound of its wheels on the rails. There’s something special about this form of travel that makes for easy conversation, which is just what happens to the four strangers who meet in TRAINS AND LOVERS. As they journey by rail from Edinburgh to London, the four travelers pass the time by sharing tales of trains that have changed their lives.

A generation after the events of THE LONG EARTH, humankind has spread across the new worlds opened up by “stepping.” A new “America” --- Valhalla --- is emerging more than a million steps from Datum, our Earth. Valhalla is growing restless under the controlling long arm of the Datum government. Soon Joshua Valiente is summoned by Lobsang to deal with a building crisis that threatens to plunge the Long Earth into a war unlike any humankind has waged before.

Ranjit Singh, a former Indian Army Captain trying to escape a shameful past, is now a caretaker on the exclusive resort island of Martha’s Vineyard, looking after the vacation homes of the rich and powerful. One harsh winter, he secretly moves his family into the house of one of his clients, an African-American Senator. But when mysterious men break into the house, Ranjit is forced to enter the Senator’s shadowy world, where his only ally is the Senator’s beautiful wife, who has secrets of her own.

“Happy again, back in the kingdom of light,” writes Paul Theroux as he sets out on a new journey through the continent he knows and loves best. Theroux first came to Africa as a 22-year-old Peace Corps volunteer, and the pull of the vast land never left him. Now he returns, after 50 years on the road, to explore the little-traveled territory of western Africa and to take stock both of the place and of himself.

In William Dietrich’s THE BARBED CROWN, the sixth tale of rogue and adventurer Ethan Gage, our hero returns to Paris and London. Against a background of imperial pomp and the gathering clouds of war, Gage plots revenge on Napoleon Bonaparte for the kidnapping of his son.

In this breathtaking saga of love, war, art and intrigue, Edward Rutherfurd has set his sights on the most magnificent city in the world: Paris. Moving back and forth in time across centuries, the story unfolds through intimate and vivid tales of self-discovery, divided loyalties, passion, and long-kept secrets of characters both fictional and real, all set against the backdrop of the glorious city.

When a local woman tells Sergeant Hamish Macbeth that she doesn't remember what happened the previous evening, he doesn't begin to worry. She had been out drinking, after all, and he'd prefer not to be bothered with such an arrogant and annoying woman. But when her body is discovered, Hamish is forced to investigate a crime that the only known witness --- now dead --- had forgotten.

Through hard work and determination, Linda Greenlaw had created a life of peaceful independence, living on a rugged island off the coast of Maine. Then came Mariah, a troubled 15-year-old who arrives on the island to stay with her uncle. But when it is revealed that Mariah has suffered terrible abuse at his hands, the island comes together to rescue the teenager from further harm. The residents nominate Linda, who is not exactly the picture of maternal warmth, to be Mariah’s guardian.

The road to today's modern court, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor writes, was one fraught with change, upheaval and contingency for most of our nation's history. So much of what we take for granted was once steeped in uncertainty. Here, Justice O'Connor sheds light on the people and transformations that took us from John Jay to John Roberts, from an erratic young court to the incredible institution that endures today.