Although Birdie gets a little hungover sometimes and has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature. Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie, he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains. But soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she ever could have imagined.

A professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a mutilated man in a dark alley and reports it to the police. When shown a crime scene photo, she finds a stark warning written in tiny print with coral nail polish on the brick wall beside the body: “Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert.” The professor becomes the first informant on the case, which is led by a detective newly obsessed with poetry and trailed by a long list of failures. But what has the professor really seen? As the bodies of more castrated men are found alongside lines of verse, the detective tries to decipher the meaning of the poems to put a stop to the violence spreading throughout the city.

It’s a Friday night in a campus bar in Berkeley, fall of 2000, and Percy Marks is pontificating about music again. Hall and Oates is on the jukebox, and Percy --- who has no talent for music, just lots of opinions about it --- can’t stop herself from overanalyzing the song, indulging what she knows to be her most annoying habit. But something is different tonight. The guy beside her at the bar, fellow student Joe Morrow, is a songwriter. And he could listen to Percy talk all night. Joe asks Percy for feedback on one of his songs --- and the results kick off a partnership that will span years, ignite new passions in them both, and crush their egos again and again. Is their collaboration worth its cost? Or is it holding Percy back from finding her own voice?

Avignon, 1347. Eleanore is a young midwife and herbalist with remarkable skills. But as she learned the day her mother died, the most dangerous thing a woman can do is draw attention to herself. In a chance encounter, Eleanore meets the enigmatic personal physician to the powerful Pope Clement and strikes a deal with him to take her on as his apprentice. Then, two pieces of earth-shattering news: the Black Death has made landfall in Europe, and the disgraced Queen Joanna is coming to Avignon. She is pregnant and in need of a midwife, a role only Eleanore can fill. The plague spreads like wildfire, leaving half the city dead in its wake. Desperate for a scapegoat, the people of Avignon follow a group of religious fanatics on a witch hunt, one that could cost Eleanore --- an intelligent, unwed woman; a talented healer --- everything.

Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, will grow to have a feisty and somewhat uncompromising character in adult life. But she is always a one-off, from her infancy. Young Elphie is shaped and molded by the behaviors of her promiscuous mother, Melena, and her pious father, Frex. She suffers ordinary childhood jealousies when her sister, saintly Nessarose, and her brother, junior felon Shell, arrive. She first encounters the mistreatment of the Animal populations of Oz, which live adjacent to but not intertwined with human settlements, haunted by a Monkey and receiving aid from Dwarf Bears. She thrashes through her first bruising attempts at friendship, a possible lifeline from her tricky family life. And she gleans the benefits of an education --- until she arrives at the doors of Shiz University, about to meet the radiant creature that is Galinda.

In 2003, at the prestigious Brookfield Conservatory in Boston, a chance encounter sparks an inimitable friendship between driven pianist and singer Anna Buckley and composer wunderkind Will Pendleton. But soon after graduation, one night forever alters the trajectory of their lives, destroying their relationship in the process. Twenty years later in New York, 16-year-old piano virtuoso Lottie Thomas is grappling with the rigors of her elite prep school and the confounding disappearance of the woman who gave her up at birth. When Lottie suddenly discovers the startling truth of her identity, the revelation catalyzes a chain of events that not only reunites Lottie with her birth parents, but forces them together on a rock tour bus for a careening cross-country journey, where they finally must reconcile with irrevocable choices from the past.

Edge, a shadow organization made up of the most powerful figures in Galway society, exists to rid the city of criminals and abusers who have evaded the law. Long wary of the organization, the Vatican is not pleased when rumors start swirling that one of the Catholic Church’s own priests has joined its ranks. An envoy to the Archdiocese shows up at private detective Jack Taylor’s door, asking him to go speak to a priest named Kevin Whelan and dissuade him from any involvement with Edge. Jack accepts the mission, but the next day Father Whelan is found dead. As more Edge members are murdered, the Vatican grows alarmed that someone even worse will take their place. It’s up to Jack Taylor to nail the culprit before Edge is dissolved completely and Galway is thrown into chaos.

Just before Christmas 1799, Elma Sands slips out of her Quaker cousin’s boarding house --- and doesn’t come home. Her body is eventually found in the Manhattan Well. Handbills circulate around the city accusing a carpenter named Levi Weeks of seducing and murdering Elma. But privately, quietly, Levi’s wealthy brother calls in a special favor. Aaron Burr’s legal practice can’t finance both his expensive tastes and his ambition to win the 1800 New York elections. To defend Levi Weeks is a double win: a hefty fee plus a chance to grab headlines. Alexander Hamilton has his own political aspirations; he isn’t going to let Burr monopolize the public’s attention. If Burr is defending Levi Weeks, then Hamilton will too. As the trial and the election draw near, Burr and Hamilton race against time to save a man’s life --- and destroy each other.

Composed over a period of some 20 years, GRAVITY is Elizabeth Rosner's profoundly searching account of her experience as the daughter of Holocaust survivors. In an extraordinarily powerful mix of poetry and prose, Rosner traces the earliest remembered resonances of her parents' past and her dawning awareness of the war history that colored her family home during her youth in Schenectady, New York. She recounts her false starts in raising the subject with her father (a survivor of Buchenwald concentration camp), his piecemeal revelations, and their eventual travels together to the sites of the nightmare in Germany. And she evokes, courageously and heart-wrenchingly, her search for identity against the gravitational pull of her parents' experience and the traditional upbringing they've given her.

In 1949, amidst the smog of London, Dennis Knuckleyard, a hapless 18-year-old employed by a secondhand bookshop, discovers a novel that simply does not exist. It is a fictitious book, one only existing within another novel. Yet it is physically there in his hands. How? Dennis has stumbled on a book from the Great When, a magical version of London beyond time and space, where reality blurs with fiction and concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous, terrible beings. But this other, magical London must remain a secret. If Dennis cannot find a way to return this book to where it belongs, he risks facing gruesome and grave repercussions. Soon he finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may alter and endanger both Londons forever.

Nym never told Prince Renn she loved him. And now, as a captive and political pawn to the ruthless King Nicosia, Nym finds herself guarding more than her forbidden feelings for Renn as the kingdoms of Cansere and Sesta clash and the bloodshed of war rages. King Nicosia will stop at nothing to find Renn’s weakness and claim the kingdoms as his. Now Nym must find a way to escape the cruel and twisted fate of imprisonment as she faces the unimaginable horrors and dangerous secrets hidden within King Nicosia’s palace walls. With the succession of kings on the line and a dangerous prophecy unfolding, Prince Renn faces his own impossible choice. The future of the throne hinges on a political alliance that means forsaking his love for Nym. If he can’t fulfill his destiny and unite the kingdoms, King Nicosia will destroy them all.

It's July 1992, and the Troubles in Northern Ireland are still grinding on after 25 apocalyptic years. Detective Inspector Sean Duffy got his family safely over the water to Scotland, to "Shortbread Land." Duffy is a part-timer now, only returning to Belfast six days a month to get his pension. It's an easy gig, if he can keep his head down. But then a murder case falls into his lap while his protege is on holiday in Spain. A carjacking gone wrong and the death of a solitary, middle-aged painter. But something is not right, and as Duffy probes, he discovers that the painter was an IRA assassin. So the question becomes: Who hit the hitman, and why? This is Duffy's most violent and dangerous case yet, and the whole future of the burgeoning "peace process" may depend upon it.

Nikki hasn’t seen her grandmother in years. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, due to a mysterious estrangement between her mother and grandmother, she’s determined to learn the truth while she still can. But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become its queen. The more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land, and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she discovers in the woods, the more she realizes how much of her identity and her family’s secrets are wrapped up in these hills.

The Naik sisters escaped their traumatic past in Mumbai to come to the States, but their journeys have been vastly different. Simi is working toward a bright future as a pediatric nurse in a small town in Kentucky when Rupi shows up at her door in distress, on the run, and dragging trouble in her wake. With Rupi’s safety in jeopardy, the sisters hatch a desperate plan to keep her in the country: Rupi must get married --- and fast --- even if it means Simi recruiting the man she’s been secretly dating as her sister’s groom. As the big day inches closer, Simi and Rupi face a storm of wedding shenanigans and romantic surprises, not to mention sisterly jealousies. As the stakes and tensions rise, will their secrets tear them apart, or will they find a way to risk everything for love?

After reckless behavior costs NYPD detective Leigh O’Donnell her job and her marriage, she returns with her four-year-old daughter to her beautiful hometown of Copper Falls, Ohio. While the town may seem idyllic, something rotten lies at its core. Three men in town have drowned in what Leigh suspects to be a triple homicide. She hopes that by finding out who killed them, she just might get her life back on course. Headstrong and intuitive, Leigh isn’t afraid to face a killer, but she has to do more than that to discover the truth about what happened to those men. She must unravel a web of secrets going back generations, and, in doing so, plumb the darkness within herself.

Ten years after her daughter, Melanie, was murdered, Bree Winter is finally moving on with a new love, a new home and a new beginning. Then a deathbed confession from the convicted killer throws Bree’s life into a tailspin all over again. He readily confesses to murdering four girls. But not Melanie. At first, Bree and her ex-husband don’t buy a word of it. Until inconsistencies about the crime emerge. So does the dreadful feeling that the monster who shattered Bree’s family isn’t lying. The only way she can get to the truth is to power through the trauma and return to the town in upstate New York where Melanie’s life came to a brutal end. Not only could the real killer still be in their midst, but as Bree begins to dig through Melanie’s past, what she discovers calls into question everything she has believed --- about the crime and about Melanie herself.

A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr. awakens to is one he barely recognizes. His advertising job is history, his Manhattan apartment is gone, and the love of his life has left him behind. He’s been asleep for two years; with no one to turn to, he realizes it’s been 10 years since he last saw his family. Lost and disoriented, he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of Fort Lee, New Jersey; back into the waiting arms of his parents, who are operating under the illusion that he never left; and back to Joja, their ever-struggling sushi restaurant that he was set to inherit before he ran away from it all. There is value in the joyous rhythms of this once-abandoned life. But second chances are an even messier business than running a restaurant, and the lure of a self-determined path might prove too hard to resist.

Benjamin Franklin was one of the preeminent scientists of his time. Driven by curiosity, he conducted cutting-edge research on electricity, heat, ocean currents, weather patterns, chemical bonds and plants. But today, Franklin is remembered more for his political prowess and diplomatic achievements than his scientific creativity. In INGENIOUS, Richard Munson recovers this vital part of Franklin’s story, reveals his modern relevance, and offers a compelling portrait of a shrewd experimenter, clever innovator and visionary physicist whose fame opened doors to negotiate French support and funding for American independence. Munson’s riveting narrative explores how science underpins Franklin’s entire story and argues that his political life cannot be understood without giving proper credit to his scientific accomplishments.

While on a routine security assessment in India, Taskforce operator Pike Logan foils an attempted attack on a meeting between the CIA and India’s intelligence service. After another terrorist operation at the Taj Mahal, Pike begins to believe that outside powers are attacking India in the gray zone between peace and war, leveraging terrorist groups for nothing more than economic gain. But the separatists conducting the operations have their own agenda. After a massive slaughter and kidnapping of hostages during an elaborate Indian pre-wedding party, two global powers are destabilized, and only Pike Logan and his team can de-escalate the tension by rescuing the captives.

As the esteemed Head Maid and Special Events Manager of the Regency Grand Hotel, two good things are just around the corner for Molly Gray --- a taping of the hit antiquities TV show “Hidden Treasures” and her wedding to Juan Manuel. When Molly brings in some old trinkets to be appraised on the show, one item is revealed to be a rare and coveted artifact worth millions. Molly becomes a rags-to-riches sensation, and a media frenzy swirls as she prepares to sell her priceless treasure. Then, on auction day, the treasure suddenly vanishes, and Molly and her friends find themselves at the center of the boldest art heist in recent memory. But the key to this mystery lies in the past, in a long-forgotten diary written by Molly’s Gran. For the first time ever, Molly learns about her grandmother’s secrets. As fate would have it, Gran’s greatest love was someone Molly knows quite well.

Phil is ordinary. A mid-level Washington lobbyist for a decidedly unsexy organization, unhappy in the way all mildly successful, minimally influential men are. That is until the spring of 2019, when Phil’s picks for the NCAA March Madness Tournament start panning out. He really may do it: predict a perfect bracket for a billion-dollar prize. At first, Cassandra is just along for Phil’s soaring rise --- she had foreseen it happening, after all. Despite moving in different circles since their shared university days and Cassandra never much liking him, she recognizes in Phil the making of a legend worthy of the highest art. What Cassandra fails to predict, though, is just how much she’d grow to care about Phil’s wife, Raleigh --- and that the grandest narrative arcs sometimes unfold at the steepest of personal costs.

Grabbing an armful of clothes off the clothesline, Ciara Fay straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. All she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe. On the surface, she has a perfect life. Her husband, Ryan, is a good provider, and they have another baby on the way. But he also monitors Ciara's every move, flies into unpredictable rages where he convinces her she can do nothing right, and has isolated her from work, friends and her beloved family. With no job and no support, Ciara struggles to provide a sense of normalcy for her little girls. Facing a broken housing system, they move into a hotel room on a floor reserved for women like her. Ryan, meanwhile, wages a relentless campaign to win her back, and Ciara wavers. He never hit her, after all. And don't the girls need a stable home?

It’s been a year since Roz and Vin survived a life-altering accident, and their marriage hasn’t been the same. But Roz has held out hope that they can fix things, until she discovers Vin has signed a new lease. So she does what any soon-to-be-divorced Manhattanite would do: sign up for a figure-drawing class. Between Roz’s determined attempts to improve her artistic skills and her adventures with her best friend, Raffi, she can almost ignore Vin’s impending move-out date. But it all would be a lot easier if Vin wasn’t Raffi’s older brother, and if she didn’t still find him incredibly attractive and kind. In fact, Vin is so kind that he offers to let Roz draw him. As Roz works to capture the wholeness of the person she fell in love with, will they both be able to draw upon the feelings they buried deep inside to finally heal together?

In 1480, the arrival of a well-dressed stranger from London upends John Collan’s life forever. John is not John Collan, the son of Will Collan, but Lambert Simnel, the son of the long-deceased Duke of Clarence. Lambert has been hidden in the countryside after a brotherly rift over the crown --- and because Richard III has a habit of making his nephews disappear. He is removed from his humble origins and sent to Oxford to be educated in a manner befitting the throne’s rightful heir. There he encounters the intractable Joan, the delightfully strong-willed daughter of his Irish patrons, who is imbued with both extraordinary political savvy and occasional murderous tendencies. Together Lambert and Joan form an alliance that will change the fate of the English monarchy.

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second-class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment. As they embark on their own investigation, the Queens of Crime discover that they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

Following several months abroad, Judge Dee Ren Jie has returned to London to foil a transaction between a Russian diplomat and a Japanese mercenary. Aided by Lao She, Dee stops the illicit sale of an extremely valuable “dragon-taming” mace. The mace’s owner is a Chinese businesswoman who thanks Dee for its retrieval by throwing a lavish dinner party. In attendance is British banking official A. G. Stephen, who argues with the group about the tenuous state of Chinese nationalism --- and is poisoned two days later. Dee knows this cannot be a coincidence and suspects Stephen won’t be the only victim. Sure enough, a young Chinese communist of Lao’s acquaintance is killed not long after --- and a note with a strange symbol is found by his body. What could connect these murders? Could it be related to rumors of a conspiracy regarding the Chinese Eastern Railway?

Growing up on his family’s cattle farm in western Iceland, young Orri has gained an appreciation for the beauty found in everyday things. But the outer world still beckons, so he leaves his no-nonsense Lithuanian Jewish mother and his taciturn father, Pabbi, to attend university in Reykjavík. No longer able to find joy in his way of life, Pabbi falls into a depression soon after Orri goes away to school. Feeling adrift and aimless at the end of his first semester, Orri comes home. For the first time, Pabbi allows Orri to help him run the farm. Meanwhile, Orri meets a kindred spirit on the internet: Mihan, a part-time student. Over time, their connection deepens. By year’s end, Orri must decide if he wants to --- or should --- return to university, and what a future with Mihan would hold, if she’ll have him.

For the first time in a generation, Clay Risen delivers a narrative history of the anti-Communist witch hunt that gripped America in the decade following World War II. This period, known as the Red Scare, was an outgrowth of the conflict between social conservatives and New Deal progressives, and the terrifying onset of the Cold War. Marked by an unprecedented degree of political hysteria, this was a defining moment in American history, completely unlike any that preceded it. Drawing upon newly declassified documents, journalist Clay Risen recounts how politicians like Joseph McCarthy, with the help of an extended network of other government officials and organizations, systematically ruined thousands of lives in their deluded pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies.

1915: Manhattan’s Book Row, an eclectic jumble of 40 bookshops along Fourth Avenue, is the mecca for rare book buyers from around the world, and the haunt of locals looking for a bargain. It is also the target of the most vicious censor in American history --- Anthony Comstock --- and home to three sisters who vow to stop him. For the three Applebaum sisters, the Arcadia Rare Bookshop is the only home they’ve ever known. Unbeknownst to her older sisters, Celia has joined a group of young people who secretly print and distribute articles on women’s health by hiding them within the pages of ordinary cookbooks, household hints and sewing patterns. Meanwhile, the Comstock Laws threaten anybody who owns or circulates “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” publications. Secrets and a mysterious stranger mean that the fate of the famed Book Row is anything but secure.

As a child, Isabel Allende watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without “resources or voice.” She became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn’t have. As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote “with a knife between our teeth” about women’s issues. She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one’s sexuality.

Five high school friends are bonded by an oath to protect one another no matter what. Then, on a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find something extraordinary: a mysterious staircase to nowhere. One friend walks up --- and never comes back down. Then the staircase disappears. Twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared. Now the group returns to find the lost boy --- and what lies beyond the staircase in the woods.

In 1927, Clara Harrington’s magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, disappears off the coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just 12 years old. Her departure leaves behind not only a devoted husband and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. By 1952, Clara is an illustrator raising her own daughter, Wynnie. One day, a stranger named Charlie Jameson contacts her from London claiming to have discovered a handwritten dictionary of her mother’s lost language. At the Jameson family’s retreat, Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her mother and the story she left behind.

After receiving multiple tips from his devoted readership, a writer fascinated by the occult put together 11 case files, each featuring its very own strange building. Each of the 11 structures in this book has a floor plan that conceals a disturbing architectural quirk: from disappearing rooms to apartments with no means of escape. Each building tells its own chilling story. And each is part of a grander puzzle. Look closely…and you'll see that everything is connected. All leading to a revelation so horrifying you won't want to believe it.

For decades, Joni Mitchell’s life and music have enraptured listeners. One of the most celebrated artists of her generation, Mitchell has inspired countless musicians --- from peers like James Taylor, to inheritors like Prince and Brandi Carlile --- and authors, who have dissected her music and her life in their writing. At the same time, Mitchell has always been a force beckoning us still closer, as --- with the other arm --- she pushes us away. Given this, music critic Ann Powers wondered if there was another way to draw insights from the life of this singular musician who never stops moving, never stops experimenting. In TRAVELING, Powers seeks to understand Mitchell through her myriad journeys.

In the aftermath of her mother's death, Eleanor is unmoored. For years, her mother orchestrated every detail of her life, so that Eleanor could focus on her career as a therapist. Left to navigate the world on her own, Eleanor clings to her mother’s final directive: use her inheritance to buy a house. She impulsively buys a model home in a valley-turned-construction site, a picturesque development steeped in a shadowy history. It feels like a fresh start until the rain comes --- an endless, torrential downpour. As water seeps in through the house’s cracks, the line between what is real and what is not begins to blur, Eleanor’s reality unravels, and she is forced to reckon with the secrets she’s buried and the dark choices she’s made.

Influencer and baking sensation April Masterson knows the secret to the perfect gooey brownies. Or how to make key lime squares that will melt in your mouth. But if you keep watching her offline, you may find out some other secrets about April. Secrets she'd rather you didn't know. Where did her son go when he snuck out late at night? What was she doing with the local soccer coach behind fogged windows? And what's buried in her backyard? April's secrets are enough to destroy her. I'll make sure of that.

When 34-year-old Cath loses her mostly absentee mother, she is ambivalent. With days of quiet, unassuming routine in Buffalo, New York, Cath consciously avoids the impulsive, thrill-seeking lifestyle that her mother once led. But when she’s forced to go through her mother’s things one afternoon, Cath is perplexed to find tickets for an upcoming “murder week” in England’s Peak District. A whole town has come together to stage a fake murder mystery to attract tourism to their quaint hamlet. Baffled but helplessly intrigued by her mother’s secret purchase, Cath decides to go on the trip herself --- and begins a journey she never could have anticipated. Teaming up with her two cottage-mates, Cath sets about solving the “crime” and begins to unravel shocking truths about her mother along the way.

As Sylvia Bergstrom Compson contends with financial setbacks at Elm Creek Quilt Camp, her friend and colleague Summer Sullivan, curator of the Waterford Historical Society’s quilt gallery, asks a special favor. When Sylvia and her elder sister were teenagers, they entered a quilt in the Sears National Quilt Contest for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition. The unprecedented competition offered its 25,000 participants the opportunity for artistic expression, with the finalists’ quilts prominently displayed at the Chicago World’s Fair. If Sylvia lent the Bergstrom sisters’ World’s Fair Quilt to Summer’s exhibit, it would illuminate a forgotten chapter of women’s history during the difficult years of the Great Depression. Sylvia grants Summer’s request, but with misgivings. The fragile antique requires careful cleaning and repair --- and not all of the memories it evokes are pleasant.