Luisa “Lu” Brant is the newly elected --- and first female --- state’s attorney of Howard County, Maryland. She sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death. The case dredges up painful memories, reminding her family of the night when her brother, AJ, saved his best friend at the cost of another man’s life. Lu now wonders if the events of 1980 happened as she remembers them. What details might have been withheld when she was a child? The more she learns about the case, the more questions arise.

A New Yorker endures a romantic getaway with a cash-strapped pot grower to a “clothing optional resort” in California; a nerdy high-schooler has her first sexual experience at Geology Camp; an unemployed college grad returns to her childhood home after her father’s funeral and encounters a surprise in his browser history. With bone-dry humor and unexpected tenderness, Rebecca Schiff’s stories offer a singular view of growing up (or not) and finding love (or not) in today’s ever-uncertain landscape. THE BED MOVED is a wry and irreverent take on the human connections --- no matter how fleeting --- that make us who we are.

When a woman and her husband, desperate for a baby, find themselves unable to conceive, they decide to take further steps. Since it is the husband who is infertile, the heroine decides to use a donor. And all seems to be well. Three months pass, and she is happily pregnant. But a shocking revelation occurs when she discovers that a man arrested for a series of brutal murders is her donor --- the biological father of the child she is carrying. Delving deeper to uncover the truth, the heroine must face her worst fears, and confront a terrifying truth.

A fixture in the literary canon, Charlotte Brontë is revered by readers all over the world. Her novels featuring unforgettable, strong heroines still resonate with millions today. Part of a remarkable family that produced three acclaimed female writers at a time in 19th-century Britain when few women wrote, and fewer were published, Brontë has become a great source of inspiration to writers, especially women, ever since. Now in READER, I MARRIED HIM, 20 of today’s most celebrated female authors have spun original stories, using the opening line from JANE EYRE as a springboard for their own flights of imagination.

In 1948, sisters Ada, Vivie and Bec assemble at their beloved family cottage in Woodmont, Connecticut. Ada is unimpeded by her strict, religious husband. Vivie is the family diplomat and an increasingly inventive chef. Unmarried Bec finds herself forced to choose between a family-centric life and a passion-filled life with a married man. But when a terrible accident occurs on the sisters' watch, the girls’ lives are changed forever. Seen through the eyes of Molly, who was 12 years old when she witnessed the accident, this is the story of a tragedy and its aftermath. Can Molly, decades after the event, draw from her aunt Bec's wisdom and free herself from the burden that destroyed so many others?

The city sleeps. Selene DiSilva walks her dog along the banks of the Hudson. She is alone --- just the way she likes it. She doesn't believe in friends, and she doesn't speak to her family. Most of them are simply too dangerous. In the predawn calm, Selene finds the body of a young woman washed ashore, gruesomely mutilated and wreathed in laurel. Her ancient rage returns. And so does the memory of a promise she made long ago --- when her name was Artemis.

Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn't expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during middle school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one's peers and families. But now they're both adults, and the planet is falling apart around them. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together --- to either save the world or plunge it into a new dark age.

Anna Łania is just seven years old when the Germans take her father, a linguistics professor, during their purge of intellectuals in Poland. Then Anna meets the Swallow Man. He is a mystery, strange and tall, a skilled deceiver with more than a little magic up his sleeve. And when the soldiers in the streets look at him, they see what he wants them to see. Over the course of their travels together, Anna and the Swallow Man will dodge bombs, tame soldiers and even, despite their better judgment, make a friend. But in a world gone mad, everything can prove dangerous. Even the Swallow Man.

Situated hundreds of miles from any other settlement, deep within the inhospitable desert of northern Kenya, Dadaab is a city like no other. Over the course of four years, Ben Rawlence became a first-hand witness to a strange and desperate limbo-land, getting to know many of those who have come there seeking sanctuary. In CITY OF THORNS, Rawlence interweaves the stories of nine individuals to show what life is like in the camp and to sketch the wider political forces that keep the refugees trapped there.

Ruth and Nat are orphans, packed into a house full of abandoned children run by a religious fanatic. To entertain their siblings, they channel the dead. Decades later, Ruth’s niece, Cora, finds herself accidentally pregnant. After years of absence, Aunt Ruth appears, mute and full of intention. She is on a mysterious mission, leading Cora on an odyssey across the entire state of New York on foot. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who --- or what --- has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road?