We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears…and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life. Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and another world --- where unicorns roam, a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and shadows become untethered from their selves. The man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along.

Newly single Meadow Liu is house-sitting for his friend, artist Selma Shimizu, when he stumbles upon The Masquerade, a translated novel about a masked ball in 1930s Shanghai. The author’s name is the same as Meadow’s own in Chinese, Liu Tian --- a coincidence that proves to be the first of many strange happenings. Over the course of a single summer, Meadow must contend with a possibly haunted apartment, a mirror that plays tricks and a stranger speaking in riddles at the bar where he works, as well as a startling revelation about a former lover. And when Selma vanishes from her artist residency, Meadow is forced to question everything he knows as the boundaries between real and imagined begin to blur.

Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendships. Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?

Emlyn doesn't let herself think about the past. How she and her best friend, Janessa, barely speak anymore. How Tyler, the love of her life, left her half dead on the side of the road three years ago. She now lives alone in her Airstream trailer and works as a fishing and hunting guide in scenic Idaho. Her closest friends are the community's makeshift reverend and a handsome Forest Service ranger. But when Tyler shows up with the news that Janessa is missing, Emlyn is propelled back into the world she worked so hard to forget. As Emlyn and Tyler trace Janessa's path through miles of wild country, Emlyn can't deny the chemistry still crackling between them. But the deeper they press into the wilderness, the more she begins to suspect that a darker truth lies in the woods --- and that Janessa isn't the only one in danger.

After nearly drowning, eight-year-old Maeve Wilhelm falls into a strange comatose state. As years pass, it becomes clear that Maeve is not physically aging. A wide cast of characters finds themselves pulled toward Maeve, each believing that her mysterious “sleep” holds the answers to their life’s most pressing questions: Kevin Marks, a museum owner obsessed with preservation; Monique Gray, a refugee and performance artist; Lionel Wilhelm, an entomologist who dreamed of being an astrophysicist; and Evangeline Wilhelm, Maeve’s identical twin. As Maeve remains asleep, the characters grapple with a mysterious new technology and medical advances that promise to ease anxiety and end pain, but instead cause devastating side effects.

At the dawn of a new century, America is falling in love with silent movies, including young Wong Liu Tsong. By 11, Wong Liu is determined to become an actress and already has chosen a stage name: Anna May Wong. At 16, Anna May leaves high school to pursue her Hollywood dreams, defying her disapproving father and her Chinese traditional upbringing. After a series of nothing parts, 19-year-old Anna May gets her big break --- and her first taste of Hollywood fame --- starring opposite Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Bagdad. Yet her beauty and talent isn’t enough to overcome the racism that relegates her to supporting roles. Though she suffers professionally and personally, Anna May fights to win lead roles, accept risqué parts, financially support her family, and keep her illicit love affairs hidden.

It’s been more than a decade since the world has come undone, and Sasha Severn has returned to her childhood home to find the mythic research that her father, the infamous Last Beekeeper, hid before he was incarcerated. There, Sasha is confronted with a group of squatters who have claimed the quiet, idyllic farm as a way to escape the horrific conditions of state housing. While she feels threatened by their presence at first, the friends soon become her newfound family. But just as she settles into her new life, Sasha witnesses the impossible. She sees a honeybee, presumed extinct. People who claim to see bees are ridiculed and silenced for reasons Sasha doesn't understand, but she can't shake the feeling that this impossible bee is connected to her father's missing research.

Arcade and Daffodil are twins born one minute apart. With their fiery red hair and thirst for escape, they form an unbreakable bond nurtured by their grandmother’s stories. Together, they disappear into their imaginations and forge a world all their own. But what the two sisters can’t escape are the generational ghosts that haunt their family. Growing up in the shadow of their rural Ohio town, the sisters cling tightly to one another. Years later, Arcade wrestles with the memories of her early life, just as a local woman is discovered drowned in the river. Soon, more bodies are found. As her friends disappear around her, Arcade is forced to reckon with the past while the killer circles closer.

Over the last few years, prominent people have died in a series of fluke accidents and shocking suicides. There’s no apparent connection, no signs of foul play. Behind it all is a powerful group of women, the Sophie Foundation, who meet over wine and cheese to review files of men who behave very, very badly and then mete out justice. Jessa Hall jumped at the mysterious, exclusive invitation to this secret club. The invite comes when she’s at her lowest, aching for a way to take back control. After years of fighting and scratching to get ahead, she’s ready for a chance to make the “bad guys” lose. Jessa soon realizes, though, just how far she’s willing to go and how dangerous this game has become. Once in the group, it’s impossible to get out.

In WAGING A GOOD WAR, Thomas E. Ricks offers a fresh perspective on America’s greatest moral revolution --- the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s --- and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize–winning war reporter, draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to advance a surprising but revelatory idea: the greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century were won not by idealism alone, but by paying attention to recruiting, training, discipline and organization --- the hallmarks of any successful military campaign.