When Terry Rourke is invited to the spare-no-expense beach wedding of his hedge fund manager brother, he thinks that his biggest worry will be flubbing the champagne toast. But this isn’t the first time Terry has been to the Hamptons. As the designer tuxedos are laid out and the flowers arranged along the glittering surf, he can’t help but take another look at a decades-old murder trial that rocked the very foundations of the town. Terry soon learns that digging up billion-dollar sand can be a very dangerous activity --- one that can quickly turn even the most beautiful beach wedding into a wake.

Aragon Urrea is a kingpin of a major drug-dealing operation in South Texas. He's also the patron of the local area --- supplying employment in legitimate operations, providing help to the helpless, rough justice to the downtrodden, and a future to a people normally with little hope. However, he is helpless when one of the most vicious cartels kidnaps his innocent 18-year-old daughter, spiriting her away into the armored complex that is their headquarters in Mexico. So he turns to Evan Smoak, the Nowhere Man. Not only must Evan figure out how to get into the impregnable fortress of a heavily armed, deeply paranoid cartel leader, he must decide if he should help a very bad man --- no matter how just the cause.

New York, 2061: The place called the Pleasure Academy is a living nightmare where abducted girls are trapped, trained for a life of abject service while their souls are slowly but surely destroyed. Dorian, a 13-year-old runaway, might never have made it out if not for her fellow inmate Mina, who’d hatched the escape plan. Unfortunately, they didn’t get away fast enough. Now Dorian is injured, terrified and wandering the streets of New York, and Mina lies dead near the waterfront while Lt. Eve Dallas looks over the scene. Mina’s expensive, elegant clothes and beauty products convince Dallas that she was being groomed, literally and figuratively, for sex trafficking --- and that whoever is investing in this high-overhead operation expects windfall profits.

Jane Addison arrives in New York to start a job at a prestigious talent agency. She jumps right in as an assistant to Hailey West. Hailey is dedicated to the authors she represents, but after her husband’s untimely death, she was left with three children to raise on her own. Francine Rivers is the head of the literary department. After her husband’s affair with the nanny, she has overcome financial hardships, but only with unbearable sacrifice. Drama agent Allie Moore loves working with the talented actors she represents --- until a passionate relationship with one of her clients threatens her career. As the agency's CFO, Merriwether Jones appears to have it all, but her husband’s jealousy over her career threatens to blow everything up.

Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks --- those that are honest about the past and those that are not --- that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves. HOW THE WORD IS PASSED illustrates how some of our country’s most essential stories are hidden in plain view --- whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted.

Evie Shao and her sister, Kass, aren’t on speaking terms. Fifteen years ago on a family camping trip, their father and brother vanished. Their dad turned up days later, convinced he'd been abducted by aliens. Their brother, Jakob, remained missing. Kass suspected that her college-dropout twin simply ran off, while Evie traded academics to pursue alien conspiracy theories, always looking for Jakob. When Evie's UFO network uncovers a new event, she goes to investigate. And discovers Jakob is back. He's older, stranger and talking of an intergalactic war, but the tensions between the siblings haven't changed at all. If the family is going to come together to help Jakob, then Kass and Evie are going to have to fix their issues, and fast.

1944, Rome. Newlywed Niki Novotná is recruited by a new American spy agency to establish a secret branch in Italy's capital. One of the OSS's few female operatives abroad and multilingual, she's tasked with crafting fake stories and distributing propaganda to lower the morale of enemy soldiers. Despite limited resources, Niki and a scrappy team of artists, forgers and others --- now nicknamed The Lipstick Bureau --- find success. But her work is also a way to escape devastating truths about the family she left behind in Czechoslovakia and a future with her controlling American husband. As the war drags on and the pressure intensifies, Niki begins to question the rules she's been instructed to follow, and a colleague unexpectedly captures her heart.

Jane Morgan is a valued member of her law firm --- or was, until a prudish neighbor observes her having sex on the roof of her NYC apartment building. Police are summoned, and a punishing judge sentences her to six months of home confinement. With Jane now jobless and rootless, life looks bleak. When a doorman lets slip that Jane isn't the only resident wearing an ankle monitor, she strikes up a friendship with fellow white-collar felon Perry Salisbury. As she tries to adapt to life within her apartment walls, she discovers she hasn’t heard the end of that tattletale neighbor --- whose past isn’t as decorous as her 9-1-1 snitching would suggest. Why are police knocking on Jane’s door again? Can her house arrest have a silver lining? Can two wrongs make a right?

Known as the Road of Bones, Siberia’s Kolyma Highway is a massive graveyard for the former Soviet Union’s gulag prisoners. Fascinated by the history, documentary producer Felix “Teig” Teigland is in Russia to drive the highway, envisioning a new series capturing Life and Death on the Road of Bones with a ride to the town of Akhust, collecting ghost stories and local legends along the way. But when Teig and his team reach their destination, they find an abandoned town, save one catatonic nine-year-old girl --- and a pack of predatory wolves, faster and smarter than any wild animals should be. This harrowing journey will push Teig beyond endurance and force him to confront the sins of his past.

Carolina Garcia-Ramirez is a rising star in national politics, taking on the establishment with her progressive agenda. Now facing her second campaign, she finds herself not only fighting a tight primary with an old guard challenger but also contending with numerous death threats coming from hundreds of suspects. It doesn’t take long for Spenser to cross paths with an extremist group called The Minutemen, led by a wealthy Harvard grad named Bishop Graves. Although Graves is a social media sensation, pushing an agenda of white supremacy and toxic masculinity, he denies he’s behind the attacks. As the primary nears and threats become a deadly plot, it’s up to Spenser, Hawk and a surprise trusted ally to ensure the congresswoman is safe.

Vera is ruthlessly ambitious, beautiful and knows how to get exactly what she wants. When she meets a wealthy older man on an exclusive dating app, she thinks nothing of the wife he tells her he’s separated from. But days later, when the man and his wife are found dead in their home, Vera is immediately blamed for their deaths and branded as good as a murderer. A year later, she emerges from a cocoon of self-pity and tries to reenter the world, but the specter of scandal still clings to her. Then she’s invited to a memorial for the wife of her former lover. As she learns more about the family, and about the couple and their friends, she begins to suspect there was more to the story than an affair gone wrong.

Loulie al-Nazari is the Midnight Merchant, a criminal who, with the help of her jinn bodyguard, hunts and sells illegal magic. When she saves the life of a cowardly prince, she draws the attention of his powerful father, the sultan, who blackmails her into finding an ancient lamp that has the power to revive the barren land --- at the cost of sacrificing all jinn. With no choice but to obey or be executed, Loulie journeys with the sultan's oldest son to find the artifact. Aided by her bodyguard, who has secrets of his own, they must survive ghoul attacks, outwit a vengeful jinn queen and confront a malicious killer from Loulie's past.

Ronke is dating Kayode and wants him to be “the one.” Her friends think he’s just another in a long line of dodgy Nigerian boyfriends. Boo has everything Ronke wants, but she’s frustrated, unfulfilled, plagued by guilt and desperate to remember who she used to be. Simi is the golden one with the perfect lifestyle. No one knows she’s crippled by impostor syndrome and tempted to pack it all in each time her boss mentions her “urban vibe.” Her husband thinks they’re trying for a baby. She’s not. When the high-flying, charismatic Isobel explodes into the group, it seems at first she’s bringing out the best in each woman. But the more she intervenes, the more chaos she sows, and Ronke, Simi and Boo’s close friendship begins to crack.

Yinka’s Nigerian aunties frequently pray for her delivery from singledom, her work friends think she’s too traditional (she’s saving herself for marriage!), her girlfriends think she needs to get over her ex already, and the men in her life…well, that’s a whole other story. But Yinka herself has always believed that true love will find her when the time is right. Still, when her cousin gets engaged, Yinka commences Operation Find-A-Date for Rachel's Wedding. Aided by a spreadsheet and her best friend, Yinka is determined to succeed. Will Yinka find herself a huzband? And what if the thing she really needs to find is herself?