One hot summer’s day, John Cole decides to shut his bookshop early, and possibly forever, and drives out of London to see his brother. When his car breaks down on an isolated road, he goes looking for help and finds a dilapidated house. As he approaches, a laughing woman he’s never seen before walks out, addresses him by name and explains she’s been waiting for him. Entering the home, John discovers an enigmatic clan of residents, all of whom seem to know who he is, and also claim they have been awaiting his arrival. They seem to be waiting for something else, too --- something final.

When the 1969 season began, fans of the New York Mets weren’t expecting much from “the Lovable Losers.” But as the season progressed, the Mets inched closer to first place and then eventually clinched the National League pennant. They were underdogs against the Baltimore Orioles, but beat them in five games to become world champions. Playing right field for the ’69 Mets was Art Shamsky, who had stayed in touch with his former teammates over the years. He organized a visit to ailing star pitcher Tom Seaver's home in California, accompanied by the #2 pitcher, Jerry Koosman, outfielder Ron Swoboda and shortstop Bud Harrelson. Together they recalled the highlights of that amazing season as they reminisced about what changed the Mets’ fortunes in 1969.

A celebrated journalist, bestselling author and recovering addict, David Carr was in the prime of his career when he suffered a fatal collapse in the newsroom of The New York Times in 2015. Shattered by his death, his daughter Erin Lee Carr, an up-and-coming documentary filmmaker at age 27, began combing through the entirety of their shared correspondence. What started as an exercise in grief quickly grew into an active investigation: Did her father's writings contain the answers to the questions of how to move forward in life and work without her biggest champion by her side? How could she fill the space left behind by a man who had come to embody journalistic integrity, rigor and hard reporting, whose mentorship meant everything not just to her, but to the many who served alongside him?

It’s 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant, but she’s also a young black woman working in an old boys’ club. Her career has stalled out, she’s overlooked for every high-profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she’s given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso --- whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention --- she says yes. In the year that follows, Marie will observe Sankara, seduce him and ultimately have a hand in the coup that will bring him down. But doing so will change everything she believes about what it means to be a spy, a lover, a sister and a good American.

For more than 25 years, Philadelphia homicide detective Bree Taggert has tucked away the nightmarish childhood memories of her parents’ murder-suicide…until her younger sister, Erin, is killed in a crime that echoes that tragic night: innocent witnesses and a stormy marriage that ended in gunfire. There’s just one chilling difference. Erin’s husband, Justin, has vanished. Bree knows how explosive the line between love and hate can be, yet the evidence against her troubled brother-in-law isn’t adding up. Teaming up with Justin’s old friend, former sheriff’s investigator and K-9 handler Matt Flynn, Bree vows to uncover the secrets of her sister’s life and death, as she promised Erin’s children. But as her investigation unfolds, the danger hits close to home.

In the years after Christ's crucifixion, Paul of Tarsus, a prosperous tentmaker and Jewish scholar, took it upon himself to persecute the small groups of his followers that sprung up. But on the road to Damascus, he had some sort of blinding vision, a profound conversion experience that transformed Paul into the most effective and influential messenger Christianity has ever had. In THE DAMASCUS ROAD, novelist Jay Parini brings this fascinating and ever-controversial figure to full human life, capturing his visionary passions and vast contradictions.

In 1912, as New York reels from the news of the Titanic disaster, ladies’ maid Jane Prescott travels to Long Island with the Benchley family. Their daughter, Louise, is to marry William Tyler at their uncle and aunt’s mansion. Jane quickly befriends the Tyler children’s nanny, Sofia, a young Italian-American woman, who ends up being a murder victim. She is asked to help with the investigation by her friend, journalist Michael Behan, who knows that she is uniquely placed to see what other tensions may simmer just below the surface in this wealthy, secretive household. Was Sofia’s murder fallout from the social tensions rife in New York, or could it be a much more personal crime?

Middle-aged and deeply depressed, Jim arrives in California from Alaska and surrenders himself to the care of his brother Gary, who intends to watch over him. Swinging unpredictably from manic highs to extreme lows, Jim wanders ghost-like through the remains of his old life attempting to find meaning in his tattered relationships with family and friends. As sessions with his therapist become increasingly combative and his connections to others seem ever more tenuous, Jim is propelled forward by his thoughts, which have the potential to lead him, despairingly, to his end.

Meredith May recalls the first time a honeybee crawled on her arm. She was five years old, her parents had recently split, and suddenly she found herself in the care of her grandfather, an eccentric beekeeper who made honey in a rusty old military bus in the yard. That first close encounter was at once terrifying and exhilarating for May. Everything she needed to know about life and family was right before her eyes, in the secret world of bees. May turned to her grandfather and the art of beekeeping as an escape from her troubled reality. The bees became a guiding force in May’s life, teaching her about family and survival, and it was during this pivotal time in May’s childhood that she learned to take care of herself.

Posadas County has enjoyed a surge in visitors, jobs and prosperity since rancher Miles Waddell used much of his inherited half billion to create an internationally renowned astronomy complex atop Torrance Mesa. Benefits include a narrow gauge train linking the village of Posadas to NightZone. A ripple of unease is felt across the county with the arrival of developer --- no, speculator --- Kyle Thompson. Why did he and his wife quietly purchase a large scrubby acreage to the north of NightZone? Unease grows with a drive-by shoot-up at the Posadas Register, its 25 shots wounding a reporter and the paper's editor. Sheriff Bob Torrez and Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman see a connection to NightZone...and worse, a connection with Torrez's own nephew. Why? And then murder strikes.

In the city of Houston --- a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America --- the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He's working at his family's restaurant, weathering his brother's blows, resenting his older sister's absence. And discovering he likes boys. Around him, others live and thrive and die in Houston's myriad neighborhoods: a young woman whose affair detonates across an apartment complex, a ragtag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, hurricane survivors, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, a reluctant chupacabra.

Late one spring night in California, Driss Guerraoui --- father, husband, business owner, Moroccan immigrant --- is hit and killed by a speeding car. The aftermath of his death brings together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter, Nora, a jazz composer returning to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; her mother, Maryam, who still pines for her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora’s and an Iraqi War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son’s secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself. As these characters tell their stories, connections among them emerge.

Once a bright student on the cusp of a promising art career, Abby Graven now languishes in her childhood home, trudging to and from her job as a supermarket cashier. Each day she is taunted from the magazine racks by the success of her former best friend Elise, a rising Hollywood starlet. When Abby encounters Elise again at their high school reunion, she is surprised that Elise still considers her not only a friend but a brilliant storyteller and true artist. Elise’s unexpected faith in Abby reignites in her a dormant hunger, and when Elise offhandedly tells Abby to look her up if she’s ever in LA, Abby soon arrives on her doorstep. There, Abby discovers that although Elise is flourishing professionally, behind her glossy magazine veneer she is lonely and disillusioned.

An unnamed country is leaving the darkness of a decade at war, and to commemorate the armistice, the government commissions a new road connecting two halves of the state. Two men, foreign contractors from the same company, are sent to finish the highway. While one is flighty and adventurous, wanting to experience the nightlife and people, the other wants only to do the work and go home. But both men must eventually face the absurdities of their positions, and the dire consequences of their presence.

Susannah, a young widow and single mother, has remarried well: to Max, a charismatic artist and popular speaker whose career took her and her 15-year-old son out of New York City and to a quiet Vermont university town. One morning, though, she finds a note on her door: I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. Max dismisses the note as a prank. But days after a neighborhood couple comes to dinner, the husband mysteriously dies in a tragic accident while on a run with Max. Soon thereafter, a second note appears on their door: DID YOU GET AWAY WITH IT? Both Susannah and Max are keeping secrets from the world and from each other --- secrets that could destroy their family and everything they have built.

Count Orazio Falier urges his son-in-law, Guido Brunetti, to investigate --- and preferably intervene in --- the seemingly innocent plan of the Count’s best friend, the elderly Gonzalo Rodríguez de Tejada, to adopt a much younger man as his son. Under Italian inheritance laws, this man would then be heir to Gonzalo’s entire fortune, a prospect Gonzalo’s friends find appalling. Gonzalo unexpectedly drops dead on the street, and one of his friends who just arrived in Venice for the memorial service is strangled in her hotel room. Now with an urgent case to solve, Brunetti reluctantly untangles the long-hidden mystery in Gonzalo’s life that ultimately led to murder --- a resolution that brings him way more pain than satisfaction.

Ravaged by the Change, an island nation in a time very much like our own has built the Wall --- an enormous concrete barrier around its entire coastline. Joseph Kavanagh, a new Defender, has one task: to protect his section of the Wall from the Others, the desperate souls who are trapped amid the rising seas outside and are a constant threat. Failure will result in death or a fate perhaps worse: being put to sea and made an Other himself. Beset by cold, loneliness and fear, Kavanagh tries to fulfill his duties to his demanding Captain and Sergeant, even as he grows closer to his fellow Defenders. A dark part of him wonders if it would be interesting if something did happen, if they came, if he had to fight for his life.

Champagne, 1940: Inès has just married Michel, the owner of storied champagne house Maison Chauveau, when the Germans invade. As the danger mounts, Michel turns his back on his marriage to begin hiding munitions for the Résistance. Inès fears they’ll be exposed, but for Céline, the French-Jewish wife of Chauveau’s chef de cave, the risk is even greater --- rumors abound of Jews being shipped east to an unspeakable fate. When Céline recklessly follows her heart in one desperate bid for happiness, and Inès makes a dangerous mistake with a Nazi collaborator, they risk the lives of those they love --- and the vineyard that ties them together.