PI Jake Longly and Nicole Jemison head to New Orleans at the behest of Nicole's uncle, movie producer Charles Balfour, when his megastar, A-list actor Kirk Ford, awakens in his hotel bed with the body of Kristi Guidry, a local college coed. Ford, in the Big Easy for a location shoot, remembers little of the evening and nothing of the murder. And, to make matters worse, Kristi is the niece of a local mafioso-type who will do whatever is necessary to avenge her death. Surrounded by glitzy Hollywood stars and intimidated by seedy underworld characters, Jake and Nicole encounter nothing but obstacles. The clock is ticking as they struggle to decipher who's lying, who's telling the truth, and exactly who schemed to murder Kristi.

Fired from his job as a science reporter for The Washington Post, Bill learns that his college roommate has fallen to his death under salacious circumstances. With nothing to lose, Bill boards a flight for Florida’s Gold Coast, ready to begin his own investigation. There’s just one catch: Bill’s father, Melsor, is angling for control of the condo board at the Château Sedan Neuve, a crumbling high-rise populated mostly by Russian Jewish immigrants. The current board is filled with fraudsters levying “special assessments” on residents, and Melsor will use any means necessary to win the board election. And who better to help him than his estranged son?

Slowed by a wooden leg and haunted by memories of the Korean War, Rory Docherty runs bootleg whiskey for a powerful mountain clan in a retro-fitted '40 Ford coupe. In the mill town at the foot of the mountains, Rory is bewitched by the mysterious daughter of a snake-handling preacher. His grandmother opposes this match for her own reasons, believing that "some things are best left buried." A folk healer whose powers are rumored to rival those of a wood witch, she concocts potions and cures for the people of the mountains while harboring an explosive secret about Rory’s mother. When Rory's life is threatened, Granny must decide whether to reveal what she knows or protect her only grandson from the past.

A woman and child are found locked in a basement, barely alive and unidentifiable. The confused, elderly man who owns the house claims he has never seen them before. As the police grow desperate for a lead, Detective Inspector Adam Fawley stumbles across a breakthrough, a link to a case he worked years before about another young woman and child gone missing. When he realizes the missing woman’s house is directly adjacent to the house in this case, he thinks he might have found the connection that could bring justice for both women. But there’s something not quite right about the little boy from the basement, and the truth will send shockwaves through the force that Fawley never could have anticipated.

In 1946, genius linguist and codebreaker Meredith Gardner discovered that the KGB was running an extensive network of strategically placed spies inside the United States, whose goal was to infiltrate American intelligence and steal the nation’s military and atomic secrets. Over the course of the next decade, he and young FBI supervisor Bob Lamphere worked together on Venona, a top-secret mission to uncover the Soviet agents and protect the Holy Grail of Cold War espionage --- the atomic bomb. But they began to suspect that a mole buried deep in the American intelligence community was feeding Moscow Center information on Venona. They raced to unmask the traitor and prevent the Soviets from fulfilling Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s threat: "We shall bury you!"

Adrian Mandrick seems to have his life in perfect order with an excellent job in a Colorado hospital, a wife and two young children he loves deeply, and a serious passion for birding. His life list comprises 863 species correctly identified and cataloged. But Adrian holds dark secrets about his childhood --- secrets that threaten to consume him after he’s contacted by his estranged mother, and subsequently relapses into an addiction to painkillers. In the midst of his downward spiral, the legendary birder with the region’s second-longest life list dies suddenly, and Adrian receives an anonymous tip that could propel him to the very top.

Paris Kahn Fraser has it all --- a successful career as an assistant district attorney, a beautiful home in New York City, and a handsome, passionate husband. Neal’s dream of fatherhood might have been the only shadow in their otherwise happy life…until Paris’ best friend comes to town. Naira Dalmia never thought she’d be a widow before 30. Left reeling in the aftermath of her husband’s death, all she wants is to start over. She trades Mumbai for New York, and rigid family expectations for the open acceptance of her best friend. But when Paris asks Naira to be their surrogate, they’ll learn if their friendship has what it takes to defy society, their families and even their own biology.

Robert Weekes is a practitioner of empirical philosophy --- an arcane, female-dominated branch of science used to summon the wind, shape clouds of smoke, heal the injured, and even fly. When a deadly accident puts his philosophical abilities to the test, Robert wins a scholarship to study at Radcliffe College, an all-women’s school. He falls hard for Danielle Hardin, a disillusioned young war hero turned political radical. However, Danielle’s activism and Robert’s recklessness attract the attention of the same fanatical anti-philosophical group that Robert’s mother fought years before. Robert and Danielle band together to fight for Robert’s place among the next generation of empirical philosophers --- and for philosophy’s very survival against the men who would destroy it.

Katya, a rising ballerina, and Sasha, a graduate student, are young and in love when an unexpected tragedy befalls their native Kiev. Years later, after the couple has safely emigrated to America, the consequences of this incident cause their son, Yuri, to be born with a rare health condition that isolates him from other children. Maggie, a passionate and dedicated teacher, agrees to tutor Yuri at his home, even though she is haunted by her own painful childhood memories. As the two forge a deep and soulful connection, Yuri's boundless curiosity and unique wisdom inspires Maggie to make difficult changes in her own life. She'll never realize just how strong Yuri has made her until she needs that strength the most.

The 10 brilliant women who are the focus of SHARP came from different backgrounds and had vastly divergent political and artistic opinions. But they all made a significant contribution to the cultural and intellectual history of America and ultimately changed the course of the 20th century, in spite of the men who often undervalued or dismissed their work. These women --- Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Renata Adler and Janet Malcolm --- are united by what Dean calls “sharpness,” the ability to cut to the quick with precision of thought and wit.

The end of the world has occurred, and Loki has been trapped in a seemingly endless purgatory until he finds a way to escape. Back in the ninth world (Earth), Loki finds himself sharing the mind of a teenage girl named Jumps, who is a bit of a mess. She’s also not happy about Loki sneaking his way into her mind, since she was originally calling on Thor. Worse, her friends have also been co-opted by the gods: Odin, Jump’s one-eyed best friend in a wheelchair, and Freya, the pretty one. Thor escapes the netherworld as well and shares the mind of a dog, and he finds that it suits him. Odin has a plan to bring back the Norse gods' ascendancy, but Loki has his own ideas on how things can go --- and nothing goes according to plan.

Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital who offers her any real help --- Priscilla Johnson --- and begs her to come home with them as her son’s nanny. Rebecca is white, and Priscilla is black, and through their relationship, Rebecca finds herself confronting, for the first time, the blind spots of her own privilege. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son.

Watergate residents --- an intriguing cast of politicians, journalists, socialites and spies --- have been at the center of America's political storms for half a century. Writer and political consultant Joseph Rodota unlocks the mysteries of the Watergate, including why Elizabeth Taylor refused to move into a Watergate apartment with her sixth husband; reveals a surprising connection between the Watergate and Ronald Reagan; and unravels how the Nixon break-in transformed the Watergate's reputation and spawned generations of "-gate" scandals, from Koreagate to Deflategate.

Retired romance author Sara Medlar finds herself back in her hometown of Lachlan, Florida, remodeling the grand old mansion she admired as a child. Then her niece, Kate, is offered a job in Lachlan --- a start in what could be a very successful career in real estate. She accepts immediately, but with so little saved up, she’ll have to approach her estranged yet incredibly famous aunt for a place to stay. Jackson Wyatt already has his own room at the mansion and irritates Kate to no end. However, when two skeletons are accidentally uncovered in the quiet town, this unlikely trio is suddenly thrust together by a common goal: to solve a mystery everyone else seems eager to keep under wraps.