Tough-as-nails criminal defense attorney Jane Smith is hip-deep in the murder trial of the century. Actually, her charmless client might’ve committed several murders. She’s also fallen in love with a wonderful guy. And an equally wonderful dog, a mutt. But Jane doesn’t have much time. She’s just received a terminal diagnosis giving her 12 months. Unless she’s murdered before her expiration date.

Chicago, early 1970s: Who does a woman call when she needs help? Jane. The best-known secret in the city, Jane is an underground women’s health organization composed entirely of women helping women, empowering them to live lives free from the expectations of society by offering reproductive counseling and safe, illegal abortions. Veronica, Jane’s founder, prides herself on the services she has provided to thousands of women, yet the price of others’ freedom is that she leads a double life. When she’s not at Jane, Veronica plays the role of a conventional housewife --- which becomes even more difficult during her own high-risk pregnancy.

Berlin 1961: When Uli Neumann proposes to Lise Bauer, she has every reason to accept. He offers her love, respect and a life beyond the strict bounds of the East German society in which she was raised. But only two short days after their engagement, Lise and Uli are torn violently apart when barbed wire is rolled across Berlin, splitting the city into two hostile halves: capitalist West Berlin, an island of western influence isolated far beyond the iron curtain; and the socialist East, a country determined to control its citizens by any means necessary. Soon, Uli and his friends in West Berlin hatch a plan to get Lise and her unborn child out of East Germany. But as distance and suspicion bleed into their lives and as weeks turn to months, how long can true love survive in the divided city?

Someone is killing the world’s leading experts on robotics and artificial intelligence. Is it a tech company trying to eliminate the competition, or is it something even more sinister? The Gray Man’s quest for a quiet life has led him to Central America, where he and his lover, Zoya Zakharova, have assumed new identities. With a list of enemies that includes billionaires, terrorists and governments, they need to keep a low profile. Eventually, though, they’re tracked down and offered a job by an old acquaintance of Zoya’s. He needs their help extracting a Russian scientist who is on the kill list. They reject the offer, but just being seen with him is enough to put assassins on their trail. Now they’re back on the run, but no matter which way they turn, it's clear that whoever is tracking them is always going to be one step ahead.

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, DEMON COPPERHEAD is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Guided by the Dark Lord Sauron, the Elves of Eregion forge the Rings of Power. Yet in secret, he has begun building the Barad-dûr in Mordor. And here, in the fires of Mount Doom, he makes the One Ring. Seeking to rule Middle-earth, Sauron begins to wage terrible war upon them. On the island-kingdom of Númenor, the Men of the West become mighty, building great ships to increase their influence throughout Middle-earth. But as their power grows, the seed of their downfall is sown. Only by uniting in alliance with the Elves can they hope to overcome Sauron. Adhering to “The Tale of Years” timeline in The Lord of the Rings, Brian Sibley assembles a new chronicle of Middle-earth. It's a tragic tale of pride, envy and downfall told substantially in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien from the various published texts originally edited by Christopher Tolkien, and illustrated with pencil drawings by Alan Lee.

When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side? In GOING INFINITE, Michael Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy and the justice system.

Carter is a young mother on a quest to find the true meaning of her heritage, which she only learned of in her teens. Allie is trying to make up for the lost years with her first born and to protect Carter from the hurt she herself suffered from her own mother. Lucie wants the granddaughter she's never met to help her get to her ancestors in the afterlife. And Geneviève is determined to conquer her demons --- before the fire inside burns her up --- with the help of the sister she lost but has never been without. Meanwhile, Mamé, in the afterlife, knows that all their stories began with her. She must find a way to cut herself from the last threads that keep her tethered to the living, just as they must find their own paths forward. And a young bison wants to understand why he keeps being moved and if he should make a break for it and run for his life.

The woman in white --- surreal artist Damaris Gethin --- has invited a select group to the opening of her exhibit, "Artist in Crime," held in the eerie subterranean Hades Gallery. As costumed models reenact famously violent deaths, the artist herself portrays Marie Antoinette on the day of her execution, complete with a guillotine on the stage. It's not a prop. Within 10 minutes of Rachel's promise to solve Damaris' future murder, the artist slips her neck into the collar of the device, and the very real blade sends her head rolling at the feet of her horrified audience. As everyone reels from the shock, Rachel quickly learns that Damaris herself accomplished the deed with the push of a button --- a suicide. So then why did she ask Rachel to solve her "murder?"

Newly heartbroken --- again --- substitute teacher Farzan Alavi is drowning his sorrows at Kansas City’s newest wine bar. But instead of being crowded between strangers, he’s escorted to a VIP table for one. The way the hot sommelier flirts with Farzan ignites instant sparks. There’s just one problem: David Curtis thinks Farzan is Kansas City’s most influential food critic. The truth only comes out after the two spend an unforgettably hot night together. It turns out that David is studying to become a master sommelier and has no interest in a relationship. Neither expects their paths to cross again...until Farzan inherits his family’s bistro. The two agree to a friends-sans-benefits exchange: David will share his industry knowledge, and Farzan will help David study. But business turns to pleasure when neither can ignore the attraction still sizzling between them.

When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favorite fantasy series. She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favorite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she's not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor's tale. So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they're doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor's fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page.

Faye Kaplan is a potter in Woodstock, New York, who lacks a perfect guy in her life. Not that she needs one. She’s definitely happy alone. That is, until she finds her town papered with anti-Semitic flyers after yet another failed singles event at the synagogue. Desperate for comfort, Faye drunkenly turns to the only thing guaranteed to soothe her --- pottery. A golem protector is just what her town needs…and adding all the little details to make him her ideal man can’t hurt, right? When a seriously hot stranger mysteriously turns up the next day, Greg seems too good to be true --- if you ignore the fact that Faye hit him with her bike and that he subsequently lost his memory. But otherwise, the man checks every single box, causing Faye to wonder if Greg’s sudden and spicy appearance might be anything but a coincidence.

Wade, a respected banker in La Jolla, CA, and his estranged wife, Fiona, make the unbearable decision to send their teenage son, Myles, away to an expensive treatment center after a streak of harmful behavior. After a year of treatment, Myles comes home, seemingly rehabilitated. But soon, he sneaks off to Tijuana to buy drugs --- and is kidnapped. When the ransom call comes, Fiona is frantic and accepts help from Andre, the Quebecois whose charity Fiona runs. In order to get the ransom money, Wade makes a deal with Andre: He’ll work for Andre’s bank in exchange for the cash. But as Wade races to rescue Myles before his kidnappers lose their patience, he realizes he’s wrapped up in more crime than just a kidnapping. He’s now indebted to a cartel.

Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service. Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any misconduct by any MI5 officer --- and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, access to all confidential information in the Service archives. Now that the administration that created Monochrome has been ousted, the investigation is a total bust --- and Griselda and Malcolm are stuck watching as their career prospects are washed away. Until the eve of Monochrome’s shuttering, when an MI5 case file appears without explanation. It is the buried history of a classified operation in 1994 Berlin whose cover-up has rewritten 30 years of Service history.

Toya Gardner, a young Black artist from Atlanta, has returned to her ancestral home in the North Carolina mountains to trace her family history and complete her graduate thesis. But when she encounters a still-standing Confederate monument in the heart of town, she sets her sights on something bigger. Meanwhile, local deputies find a man sleeping in the back of a station wagon and believe him to be nothing more than some slack-jawed drifter. Yet a search of the man’s vehicle reveals that he is a high-ranking member of the Klan, and the uncovering of a notebook filled with local names threatens to turn the mountain on end. After two horrific crimes split the county apart, every soul must wrestle with deep and unspoken secrets that stretch back for generations.

Under the direction of the Special Activities Center in the Operations Directorate of the CIA, over 300 highly trained agents operate in the darkest shadows of the country’s covert wars. Plucked from the highest echelons of America’s special mission units, these individuals go through rigorous training by the Agency to perfect the arts of assassination, sabotage, infiltration and guerrilla warfare. When diplomacy and military intervention fails, the President of the United States calls upon them to solve America’s most dangerous crises. Brian Rhome thought his time within this elite group was over. But now he’s on a desperate race against time around the globe as he confronts the traumas of his past and unravels a deadly conspiracy that threatens the highest levels of American democracy.

Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the celebrated Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless and wryly self-assured, at 22 Nell leaves her mother Carmel’s orderly home to find her own voice as a writer. As she chases obsessive love, damage and transcendence, her grandfather’s poetry seems to guide her home. Carmel knows the magic of her Daddo’s poetry too well. In his poems to her, Phil envisions his daughter as a bright-eyed wren ascending in escape from his hand. But it is Phil who departs, abandoning his wife and two young daughters. Carmel struggles to reconcile “the poet” with the father whose desertion scars her life, along with that of her fiercely dutiful sister and their gentle, cancer-ridden mother.