As the young daughter of a poor rural baker, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but schooling is impossible on the meager profits from her mother’s sweetshop. When a powerful local woman takes Sabitri under her wing, her generous offer soon proves dangerous after Sabitri makes a single, unforgivable misstep. Years later, Sabitri’s own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother’s choices, flees to America with her political refugee lover --- but the world she finds is vastly different from her dreams. As the marriage crumbles and Bela decides to forge her own path, she unwittingly teaches her little girl, Tara, indelible lessons about freedom and loyalty that will take a lifetime to unravel.

Set against the backdrop of an expanding nation, BRILLIANT BEACONS traces the evolution of America's lighthouse system from its earliest days, highlighting the political, military and technological battles fought to illuminate the nation's hardscrabble coastlines. Beginning with "Boston Light," America's first lighthouse, Eric Jay Dolin shows how the story of America --- from colony to regional backwater, to fledgling nation, and eventually to global industrial power --- can be illustrated through its lighthouses.

Though no generation believes there’s nothing left to learn, every generation unconsciously assumes that what has already been defined and accepted is (probably) pretty close to how reality will be viewed in perpetuity. And then, of course, time passes, ideas shift and opinions invert. What once seemed reasonable eventually becomes absurd, replaced by modern perspectives that feel even more irrefutable and secure --- until, of course, they don’t. BUT WHAT IF WE’RE WRONG? visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who will perceive it as the distant past.

In 1945, with no homes to return to, Jewish refugees by the tens of thousands set out for Palestine. Those who made it were hunted as illegals by the British mandatory authorities there and relied on the underground to shelter them. Taking fake names, they blended with the population, joining the wildly different factions fighting for the independence of Israel. CITY OF SECRETS follows one survivor, Brand, as he tries to regain himself after losing everyone he's ever loved.

In the fall of 1943, André Boulloche became de Gaulle’s military delegate in Paris, coordinating all the Resistance movements in the nine northern regions of France only to be betrayed by one of his associates, arrested, wounded by the Gestapo, and taken prisoner. His parents and oldest brother were arrested and shipped off on the last train from Paris to Germany before the liberation, and died in the camps. This is the first time the Boulloche family has cooperated with an author to recount their extraordinary ordeal.

Julia St. James Ford has washed up on a beach near her home in Seaside, Oregon, with no memory of how she got there or how her husband, Joe, died. The police rule the case an accident. But Joe’s brother, Sam --- Jules’ rescuer and her first love --- suspects otherwise. While Sam tries to piece the facts together, Jules fears someone is watching, determined to find out how much she knows. Behind closed doors, behind Jules’ neighbors’ smiles, are terrifying secrets. A string of sordid thrill kills…and one survivor who never should have gotten away. And as she and Sam close in on the events of one tragic night, and the truth comes flooding back, remembering a killer’s face may be the last thing Jules ever does.

The producer of a popular television cooking show, Annie Harlow loves her handsome husband and the beautiful Los Angeles home they share. But in an instant, her life is shattered. When Annie awakes from a yearlong coma, she discovers that time isn’t the only thing she’s lost. Grieving and wounded, she retreats to her old family home. There, surrounded by her free-spirited brother, their divorced mother, and four young nieces and nephews, she slowly emerges into a world she left behind years ago. With the discovery of a cookbook her grandmother wrote in the distant past, Annie unearths an age-old mystery that might prove the salvation of the family farm.

When devastating news shatters the life of six-year-old Harvey, she finds herself in the care of a veteran social worker, Wanda, and alone in the world save for one relative she has never met --- a disabled felon, haunted by a violent past he can't escape. Moving between past and present, FATHER'S DAY weaves together the story of Harvey’s childhood on Long Island and her life as a young woman in Paris.

In HER AGAIN, an intimate look at the artistic coming-of-age of the greatest actress of her generation, New Yorker contributor Michael Schulman brings into focus Meryl Streep’s heady rise to stardom on the New York stage; her passionate, tragically short-lived love affair with fellow actor John Cazale; her marriage to sculptor Don Gummer; and her evolution as a young woman of the 1970s wrestling with changing ideas of feminism, marriage, love and sacrifice.

Over the course of a single night in 2052, a homeless man named Cuthbert Handley sets out on an astonishing quest: to release the animals of the London Zoo. When he was a young boy, Cuthbert’s grandmother had told him he inherited a magical ability to communicate with the animal world --- a gift she called the Wonderments. Ever since his older brother’s death in childhood, Cuthbert has heard voices. These maddening whispers must be the Wonderments, he believes, and recently they have promised to reunite him with his lost brother and bring about the coming of a Lord of Animals…if he fulfills this curious request.

France, 1939. In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn't believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do. When a German captain requisitions Vianne's home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. As danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive. Vianne's sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious 18-year-old girl. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.

Clyde Barr has been away from Colorado’s thick forests, alpine deserts and craggy peaks for 16 years, running from a past filled with haunting memories. But now he’s back, having roamed across three continents as a hunter, adventurer, soldier of fortune and, most recently, unjustly imprisoned convict. And once again, his past is reaching out to claim him. By the light of a flickering campfire, Clyde receives a frantic phone call from his sister, Jen. No sooner has she pleaded with him to come rescue her than the line goes dead. Clyde doesn’t know how much time he has, where Jen is located, or even who has her. All he knows is that nothing short of dying will stop him from saving her.

After a harrowing, otherworldly confrontation on the shores of Exmouth, Massachusetts, Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast is missing, presumed dead. Sick with grief, Pendergast's ward, Constance, retreats to her chambers beneath the family mansion at 891 Riverside Drive --- only to be taken captive by a shadowy figure from the past. Proctor, Pendergast's longtime bodyguard, springs to action, chasing Constance's kidnapper through cities, across oceans, and into wastelands unknown. And by the time Proctor discovers the truth, a terrifying engine has stirred --- and it may already be too late.

Suddenly thrust into the role of primary caretaker for her family following the tragic death of her husband, Ellie Robbins is appointed to serve out his term as sheriff of their rural Tennessee mountain town. She has long proven she can handle herself. But becoming sheriff is altogether different, and the demands of the role are even more challenging when she is forced to combat society’s expectations for a woman. Soon enough, dark secrets come to light, and Ellie must grapple with small town superstitions and the tenuous ties she shares with a condemned killer as she carves out a place for herself in an uncertain future.

From the moment his eyes meet hers across the crime-scene tape, ex-con turned bodyguard Quasar Patterson knows he has to see the mysterious Dr. Randi Fuller again. She's a renowned psychic investigator who can foresee danger for others, but not for herself. That makes Quasar doubly determined to watch over her as she's drawn into a dangerous gang rivalry. Both her psychic gift and their blinding chemistry tell Randi that she and Quasar are fated to be entwined. Even as they surrender to the heat between them, there's no guarantee of a happily-ever-after now that an enemy has her in his sights.

A wounded officer is brought to battlefield nurse Bess Crawford’s aid station, where she stabilizes him. The odd thing is, the officer isn't British --- he's French. But in a moment of anger and stress, he shouts at Bess in German. When Bess reports the incident to Matron, her superior offers a ready explanation. The soldier is from Alsace-Lorraine, a province in the west where the tenuous border between France and Germany has continually shifted through history, most recently in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, won by the Germans. But on which side of the war do his sympathies really lie? When the French officer disappears in Paris, it’s up to Bess to find out why, even at the risk of her own life.

Ruth Wariner was the 39th of her father’s 42 children. After Ruth’s father is brutally murdered by his brother in a bid for church power, her mother remarries. In need of government assistance and supplemental income, Ruth and her siblings are carted back and forth between Mexico and the United States, where Ruth’s mother collects welfare and her stepfather works a variety of odd jobs. As she begins to doubt her family’s beliefs and question her mother’s choices, Ruth struggles to balance her fierce love for her siblings with her determination to forge a better life for herself.

When Michael sees his wife, Nancy, chatting with a stranger at a party, his intuition tells him that he’s watching her with the man she should have married. He quickly begins a campaign to replace himself within his own family with this other man --- who, to him, is worthier, better and kinder --- all so that Nancy and their two children can live the lives they deserve. While Michael pursues this man’s friendship, their daughter, Ryan, goes through a period of sexual awakening and rebellion, and the quiet, weak Nancy becomes increasingly befuddled and frustrated by the behaviors of her husband and daughter.

How far will you go to achieve a dream? That's the question a celebrated coach poses to Katie and Eric Knox after he sees their daughter Devon, a gymnastics prodigy and Olympic hopeful, compete. But then a violent death rocks their close-knit gymnastics community, and everything they have worked so hard for is suddenly at risk. As rumors swirl among the other parents, Katie tries frantically to hold her family together while also finding herself irresistibly drawn to the crime itself. What she uncovers forces Katie to consider whether there's any price she isn't willing to pay to achieve Devon's dream.