Taking chances is part of life, but when you bet your future against the odds, it’s a high-risk game. Kate Madison’s stylish resale shop has been a big SoHo success, supporting her and her four kids since her husband’s untimely death. Now they are grown and ready to forge lives of their own. And they all choose to play against the odds, to their mother’s dismay. Can the odds be beaten? Not often, as her children have to learn for themselves. For Kate, the hardest lesson will be that she can’t protect the children she loves from the choices they make --- but can only love them as they make them.

August Snow joined the police force only to be drummed out by a conspiracy of corrupt cops and politicians. It’s not long before he’s summoned to the palatial Grosse Pointe Estates, home of business magnate Eleanore Paget. Powerful and manipulative, Paget wants August to investigate the increasingly unusual happenings at her private wealth management bank. But detective work is no longer August’s beat, and he declines. A day later, Paget is dead of an apparent suicide --- which August isn’t buying for a minute. What begins as an inquiry into Eleanore Paget’s death soon drags August into a rat’s nest of Detroit’s most dangerous criminals, from corporate embezzlers to tattooed mercenaries.

Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls --- which includes Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife, and Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn. But when Lisa is found dead in her bathtub with her wrists slit, Sam appears on Quincy's doorstep. She seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out.

Ben and Caroline Tierney and their two young boys are hoping to start over. Ben has hit a dead end with his new novel, Caroline has lost her banking job, and eight-year-old Charlie is being bullied at his Manhattan school. When Ben inherits land in the village of Swannhaven, in a remote corner of upstate New York, the Tierneys believe it’s just the break they need, and they leave behind all they know to restore a sprawling estate. But as Ben uncovers Swannhaven’s chilling secrets and Charlie ventures deeper into the surrounding forest, strange things begin to happen. The Tierneys realize that their new home isn’t the fresh start they needed...and that the village’s haunting saga is far from over.

Magic is seeping out of the world, leaving the witches who have relied on it for countless centuries increasingly hopeless. Young Alice Marin is using magic’s waning days to delve into the mystery of numerous disappearances in the occult circles of New Orleans. Alice disappeared once, too --- caged in an asylum by blood relatives. Recently freed, she fears her family may be more involved with the growing crisis than she ever dared imagine. Yet the more she seeks the truth about her family’s troubled history, the more she realizes her already-fragile psyche may be at risk.

Renée Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none, as each morning she turns everything over to the day shift. A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor. But one night she catches two assignments she doesn't want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Against orders and her partner's wishes, she works both cases by day while maintaining her shift by night. As the investigations entwine, they pull her closer to her own demons and the reason she won't give up her job.

Simi Desai is 30 years old, and her husband is dying of cancer. He has two last wishes in his final months: that she’ll have his baby so that a piece of him lives on, and that she’ll reconcile with her old flame, who just happens to be their mutual best friend. And so over the course of their last summer together, Simi’s husband plans a series of big and small adventures for this unlikely trio, designed to help them say goodbye to each other and prove to Simi that it’s okay to move on without him --- and even find love again.

Divorce left Harper Szymanski with a name no one can spell, a house she can't afford, and a teenage daughter who's pulling away. With her fledgling virtual-assistant business, she's scrambling to maintain her overbearing mother’s ridiculous Susie Homemaker standards and still pay the bills. Spending half her life in school hasn't prepared Dr. Stacey Bloom for her most daunting challenge --- motherhood. Her mother will be horrified to learn that Stacey's husband plans to be a stay-at-home dad…assuming Stacey can first find the courage to tell Mom she's already six months pregnant. Separately Harper and Stacey may be a mess, but together these sisters can survive anything.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress and dreams of being a princess. When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl. Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

Eve is a dreamer, a feeler, a careening well of sensitivities who can’t quite keep her feet on the ground or steer clear of trouble. She’s a laugher, a crier, a quirky and quick-witted bleeding-heart-worrier. Ben is an engineer, an expert at leveling floors who likes order, structure and straight lines. He doesn’t opine, he doesn’t ruminate, he doesn’t simmer until he boils over. So naturally, when the two first cross paths, sparks don’t exactly fly. But then they meet again. And again. And then, finally, they find themselves with a deep yet fragile connection that will change the course of their relationship --- possibly forever.

How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat --- until the cycle begins again. No matter how often we debate this question, none of what we say is original. Every argument is a pale shadow of the first and greatest debate, which erupted more than a century ago. Its themes resurface every time Americans argue whether or not to intervene in a foreign country. Revealing a piece of forgotten history, Stephen Kinzer transports us to the dawn of the 20th century, when the United States first found itself with the chance to dominate faraway lands.

Meet Sunday Night, a woman with physical and psychological scars, and a killer instinct. Sunnie has spent years running from her past, burying secrets and building a life in which she needs no one and feels nothing. But a girl has gone missing, lost in the chaos of a bomb explosion, and the family needs Sunnie’s help. Is the girl dead? Did someone take her? If she’s out there, why doesn’t she want to be found? It’s time for Sunnie to face her own demons --- because they just might lead her to the truth about what really happened all those years ago.

The Cates family had always been a bad lot. Game warden Joe Pickett had been able to strike a fierce blow against them when the life of his daughter April had been endangered, but he’d always wondered if there’d be a day of reckoning. He’s not wondering any longer. Joe knows they’re coming after him and his family now. He has his friend Nate by his side, but will that be enough this time? All he can do is prepare...and wait for them to make the first move.