Stafford Lee Penney is a small-town lawyer with a big-time reputation for winning every case he tries. In his sharp suits and polished Oxford shoes, Penney is Biloxi, Mississippi’s #1 Lawyer and top local celebrity. Just as Penney notches his latest courtroom victory, his wife is scandalously killed. He spirals into a legal and personal losing streak, damaging his reputation and ruining his career. That’s when Penney makes a bold decision. He stops trading on his power-lawyer identity and creates a new one: lawyer lifeguard. Moonlighting at the beach, showing up to court in flip-flops, and mentoring a law student, the new Penney is at first unrecognizable. It’s said that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. But when Penney is accused of murder, the #1 Lawyer will find a way to triumph.

If Ted Ainsworth were to compare himself to one of the ice cream flavors made by his family’s company, it might be vanilla --- sweet, inoffensive and pleasantly predictable. At 43, Ted is convinced there’s nothing remotely remarkable about him, except perhaps his luck in having landed handsome, charismatic Giles as a husband. Then Giles suddenly leaves him for another man, filling his social media feed with posts about #newlove and adventure. And Ted, who has spent nearly 20 years living with, and often for, another person, must reimagine the future he has happily taken for granted. But perhaps there is another Ted slowly blossoming now that he’s no longer in Giles’ shadow --- one who is funny, sassy and more uninhibited. Someone willing to take chances on new friendships and even new love.

Princess Lia of Locris is the unlikeliest person to be Ilion’s defender. Once, she’d have gladly seen the entire adversarial nation burn. But much has changed. Ilion is home to too many innocents, including her sister. Besides, there is no escaping the goddess’s command. Lia is Ilion’s prophesied savior. With that mortal obligation come rules: She must never consummate her marriage to Xander, prince of Ilion, lest she lose her powers of divine magic when she needs them most. Physically bonded to share each other’s pain, these former enemies have grown from merely attracted to something more profound. But what future can they have when Lia’s destiny requires sacrificing her life? As enemies close in and war threatens everything they love, Lia and Xander must find a way to follow the goddess’s laws while also accepting the truth in their hearts.

Assaulted and presumed dead by his longtime nemesis, Will, literary forger Henry Slader awakens in a shallow grave. He exhumes himself and sets out to exact revenge on his rival, orchestrate Will’s downfall, and make a fortune along the way --- armed with a devastating secret about Will’s past. Slader quickly draws in Will’s daughter, Nicole, wielding his threats against her father to blackmail her into forging inscriptions by such authors as Poe, Hemingway, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. As Nicole’s skill grows, so does her devotion to --- and doubts about --- her father’s integrity, until she commits the ultimate betrayal for the sake of his freedom. She forges a suite of brilliantly convincing and surpassingly valuable letters by FRANKENSTEIN author Mary Shelley --- planting within them the seeds of Slader’s doom.

Paris, 1947. Recovering from the Nazi occupation, the city suffers from an economy in shambles and an unraveled social fabric. Cecile Rosenbaum, from a bourgeois Jewish family that has lost everything, meets Minette Traoré, a feisty, French-born girl of Senegalese descent, on the bus to a Communist Youth Conference. There, she also meets Sebastien Danxomè, an aspiring architecture student from West Africa, and romance blooms. Back in Paris, Cecile and Sebastien find their budding love muddied by confused loyalties and unyielding cultural traditions. When Mack Gray, a charming African-American GI, sets his sights on Cecile, her complicated relationship with Sebastien, as well as her fierce dedication to her newfound political ideologies, are pushed to the brink.

Ukraine, 2007. War veteran Yefim Shulman was beloved by his children, wife and coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow, Nina, finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces Nina and her children to reassess the husband, father and grandfather they thought they knew and the bonds they'd formed with him and each other. Following one family over the course of 70 years and three generations, Sasha Vasilyuk shines a light into the shadowy corners of a marriage marred by secrecy and the sacrifices people make to survive.