Les, a long-time sheriff just three weeks from retirement, contends with the ravages of crystal meth and his own duplicity in his small Appalachian town. Becky, a park ranger with a harrowing past, finds solace amid the lyrical beauty of this patch of North Carolina. When an irascible elderly local is accused of poisoning a trout stream, Les and Becky are plunged into deep and dangerous waters, forced to navigate currents of disillusionment and betrayal that will force them to question themselves, test their tentative bond --- and threaten to carry them over the edge.

Ada, a friend of Alice’s mentioned briefly in ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, is off to visit her friend, but arrives a moment too late --- and tumbles down the rabbit hole herself. Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and see her safely home from this surreal world below the world. If Eurydice can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus, or Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life.

Jessica, a young Air Force drone pilot in Nevada, is tasked with launching a missile against a suspected terrorist halfway across the world. Ethan, a young Wall Street quant, is involved in a more bloodless connection to war when he develops an algorithm that enables his company’s clients to profit by exploiting the international financial instability caused by exactly this kind of antiterrorist strike. These two are only minor players, but their actions have global implications that tear lives apart --- including their own.

As Inspector Thomas Lynley investigates the London angle of an ever more darkly disturbing case, his partner, Barbara Havers, is looking behind the peaceful façade of country life to discover a twisted world of desire and deceit. The suicide of William Goldacre is devastating to those left behind who will have to deal with its unintended consequences. Could there be a link between the young man’s leap from a Dorset cliff and a horrific poisoning in Cambridge?

When Homer Hickam (the father of the author) asked for Elsie Lavender’s hand, Elsie instead chose a dancing actor named Buddy Ebsen. But ultimately her dreams of a life with him were crushed, and she married Homer. She was reminded of her carefree days with Buddy every day because of his unusual wedding gift: an alligator named Albert she raised in the bathroom. When Albert scared Homer by grabbing his pants, he gave Elsie an ultimatum: “Me or that alligator!” After giving it some thought, Elsie concluded there was only one thing to do: Carry Albert home.

Since time immemorial, the Spires have sheltered humanity, towering for miles over the mist-shrouded surface of the world. Captain Grimm commands the merchant ship Predator. Fiercely loyal to Spire Albion, he has taken their side in the cold war with Spire Aurora, disrupting the enemy’s shipping lines by attacking their cargo vessels. But when the Predator is severely damaged in combat, Grimm is offered a proposition from the Spirearch of Albion --- to join a team of agents on a vital mission in exchange for fully restoring Predator to its fighting glory.

When 10-year-old Noel Bostock is evacuated from London to escape the Nazi bombardment, he lands in a suburb northwest of the city with Vera Sedge --- a 36-year-old widow drowning in debts and dependents. Noel is mourning his godmother Mattie, a former suffragette. He has little in common with other children and even less with the impulsive Vee, who hurtles from one self-made crisis to the next. The war has provided unprecedented opportunities for making money, but what Vee needs --- and what she’s never had --- is a cool head and the ability to make a plan.

Lottie Wilkinson, Rose Arbuthnot, Caroline Dester and Beverly Fisher each decide to take a break from their current lives to spend time at Hopewell Cottage, an old, pretty cottage on a small island. When they arrive, they are transformed by the salt air, the breathtaking views, and the long, lazy days. Gradually, the ladies begin to open up: to one another and to the possibilities of lives quite different from the ones they’ve been leading. Change can’t be that hard, can it?

Told by nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, THE FISHERMEN is the Cain and Abel-esque story of a childhood in Nigeria. When their father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his absence to skip school and go fishing. At the forbidden nearby river, they meet a madman who persuades the oldest of the boys that he is destined to be killed by one of his siblings. What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact --- both tragic and redemptive --- will transcend the lives and imaginations of the book's characters and readers.

THE GIRL WHO SLEPT WITH GOD introduces readers to three sisters: young Frances, gregarious and strong-willed Jory, and moral-minded Grace. Their father, Oren, is a respected member of the community and science professor at the local college. Yet their mother’s depression and Grace’s religious fervor threaten the seemingly perfect family, whose world is upended when Grace returns from a missionary trip to Mexico and discovers she’s pregnant with --- she believes --- the child of God.

Morgan Prager, who is completing her thesis on victim psychology, is newly engaged to Bennett, a seductive but possessive and secretive man. She returns from class one day to find Bennett mauled to death and her dogs covered in blood. When Morgan tries to locate Bennett’s parents to tell them about their son’s hideous death, she discovers he was not the man he said he was. Suddenly Morgan’s research into Bennett takes on the urgency of survival: to stay alive, she must find out who is killing the women to whom Bennett was closest.

When her otherwise healthy boyfriend, Carl, enters the hospital for routine surgery, Lynn’s neatly ordered life is thrown into total chaos. Carl fails to return to consciousness after the procedure, and an MRI confirms brain death. Devastated by Carl’s condition, Lynn searches for answers. Convinced there’s more to the story than what the authorities are willing to reveal, Lynn uses all her resources at Mason-Dixon to hunt down evidence of medical error or malpractice. What she uncovers, however, is far more disturbing.

In 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis, young Alma Belasco’s parents send her away to live in safety with an aunt and uncle in their opulent mansion in San Francisco. There, as the rest of the world goes to war, she encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet and gentle son of the family’s Japanese gardener. Unnoticed by those around them, a tender love affair begins to blossom. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart as Ichimei and his family are declared enemies and forcibly relocated to internment camps run by the United States government.

Brett had been in love with Charlie from the day she laid eyes on him in college. When Charlie is found murdered, Brett is devastated. But if she is honest with herself, their marriage had been hanging by a thread for quite some time. Though all clues point to Charlie’s brother Eli, who’s been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years, any number of people might have been driven to slit the throat of Charlie Moss --- a handsome, charismatic man who unwittingly damaged almost every life he touched. Brett is determined to understand how such a tragedy could have happened --- and if she was somehow complicit.

Still mourning the death of his wife, private investigator Mark Novak accepts a case that may be his undoing. On the same day his wife died, the body of a teenage girl was pulled from the extensive and perilous cave system beneath Southern Indiana. Now the man who rescued the girl, who was believed to be her killer, begs Novak to uncover what really happened. Garrison is much like any place in America, proud and fortified against outsiders. For Mark to delve beneath the town's surface, he must match wits with the man who knows the caverns better than anyone. A man who seems to have lost his mind. A man who seems to know Mark Novak all too well.

Bryan Pierce is an internationally famous artist; each one of his canvases is inspired by an unusually vivid dream. When Bryan awakes, he possesses extraordinary new skills. All his life, he has wondered if his dreams are recollections. Linz Jacobs is a neurogeneticist who is confronted with an exact rendering of a recurring nightmare at one of Bryan's shows. She tracks down the elusive artist, and their meeting triggers Bryan's most powerful dream yet: visions of a team of scientists who, on the verge of discovering a cure for Alzheimer's, died in a lab explosion decades ago.

In New York, Special Agent Lacey Sherlock foils a terrorist attack at JFK Airport, but stopping the grenade-carrying crazy was only the beginning. Another plot unfolds nearly simultaneously with a bomb at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Meanwhile, Savich --- with the help of Agent Griffin Hammersmith --- has his hands full trying to track an elusive murderer who is able to control those under his thrall. When an attempt on Savich’s life collides with Sherlock’s terrorist case, they must race against the clock, as more lives are in danger with every passing minute.

What takes place in Paris when husbands and wives tangle with infidelity? In this compulsively readable collection, Tatiana de Rosnay paints a portrait of forbidden loves in many shades --- sometimes tragic, sometimes humorous, sometimes heartfelt, always with a dry wit and unflinching authenticity. A PARIS AFFAIR will take you on a vacation overseas, into the hidden lives of husbands, wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, where illicit desire wars with duty, and where a French take on romance will surprise you every time.

Jo Marie Rose and her handyman, Mark Taylor, are good friends --- and are becoming something more --- yet he still won’t reveal anything about his past. When Mark tells her that he’s moving out of town, Jo Marie is baffled. As she discovers the secret behind his decision to leave, she welcomes two visitors also seeking their own answers. Best friends Kellie Crenshaw and Katie Gilroy have returned to Cedar Cove for their 10-year high school reunion, looking to face down old hurts and find a sense of closure.

Still recovering from his life-threatening wounds, private detective Charlie Parker has retreated to the small Maine town of Boreas to regain his strength. There he befriends a widow named Ruth Winter and her young daughter, Amanda. But Ruth has her secrets. Old atrocities are about to be unearthed, and old sinners will kill to hide their sins. Now Parker is about to risk his life to defend a woman he barely knows, one who fears him almost as much as she fears those who are coming for her.

Many of these stories are set in Maine, but THE STATE WE'RE IN is about more than geographical location. Some characters have arrived in Maine by accident, others are trying to escape. Ann Beattie's collection is woven around Jocelyn, a wry, disaffected teenager living with her aunt and uncle while attending summer school. As in life, the narratives of other characters interrupt Jocelyn’s --- sometimes challenging, sometimes embellishing her view.

From 1957 to 1964, Robert Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa channeled nearly all of their considerable powers into destroying each other. Kennedy's battle with Hoffa burst into the public consciousness with the 1957 Senate Rackets Committee hearings and intensified when his brother named him attorney general in 1961. RFK put together a "Get Hoffa" squad within the Justice Department, devoted to destroying one man. But Hoffa, with nearly unlimited Teamster funds, was not about to roll over.

When she fell in love with her brother’s best friend, Rachel Starnes had no idea she was about to repeat a painful family pattern --- marrying a man who leaves regularly and for long stretches to work a dangerous job far from home. Through constant relocations, separations and the crippling doubts of early parenthood, Starnes weaves together strands from her past with the relentless pace of Navy life in a time of war. She evokes the challenges she faces in trying to find and claim a sense of home while struggling to chart a new path and avoid passing on the same legacy to her two young sons.

Alice Pearse is a mostly happily married mother of three, an attentive daughter, an ambivalent dog-owner, a part-time editor, a loyal neighbor and a Zen commuter. When her husband makes a radical career change, Alice is ready to lean in --- and she knows exactly how lucky she is to land a job at Scroll, a hip young start-up that promises to be the future of reading. She is proud of her new “balancing act” until her dad gets sick, her marriage flounders, her babysitter gets fed up, her kids start to grow up, and her work takes an unexpected turn.