David Kushner grew up in the suburbs of Florida in the early 1970s, running wild with his friends, exploring, riding bikes and disappearing into the nearby woods for hours at a time. One morning in 1973, however, everything changed. David’s older brother Jon, making a trip to the local convenience store, vanished. This is the story of Jon’s murder at the hands of two sadistic drifters…and everything that happened after.

Once-great war photographer Will Keller's days and nights are a haze of sex, drugs, booze and brawling in lawless Phnom Penh, Cambodia. That is, until he meets Kara Saito, a beautiful young woman who begs Will to help find her sister, June, who disappeared while interning at a local paper. Entering the dangerous Phnom Penh underworld, Will uses June’s diary --- an unsettling collection of experiences, memories and dreams --- on his search for the missing girl. However, when disturbing facts about June and her family history reveal themselves, Will realizes that the most dangerous thing in Cambodia may be June herself.

The pages of FOR A LITTLE WHILE reveal men and women living with passion and tenderness at the outer limits of the senses, each attempting to triumph against fate. Rick Bass provides searing insights into the complexity of family and romantic entanglements. The intricate stories collected here --- brimming with magic and wonder, filled with hard-won empathy, marbled throughout with astonishing imagery --- have the power both to devastate and to uplift.

When Maya Taylor, an English professor with a tendency to hide in her books, sends her daughter to Florida to look after a friend’s child, she does so with the best of intentions; it’s a chance for Ellie, 20 and spiraling, to rebuild her life. But Ellie fears she’ll only disappoint again, and in the sprawling hours of one humid afternoon, she makes a mistake that she can’t take back. In two separate timelines --- before and after the catastrophe --- Maya and Ellie must try to repair their fractured relationship and find a way to transcend not only their differences but also their more troubling similarities.

Debut novelist Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear and the limitations of solitude. Reminiscent of Jose Saramago’s early work, Michel Faber’s cult classic UNDER THE SKIN and Lionel Shriver’s WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS is an edgy, haunting debut. Tense, gripping and atmospheric, it pulls you in from the very first page and never lets you go.

What if you could live multiple lives simultaneously; have constant, perfect companionship; and never die? That’s the promise of Join, a revolutionary technology that allows small groups of minds to unite, forming a single consciousness that experiences the world through multiple bodies. But as two best friends discover, the light of that miracle may be blinding the world to its horrors. Chance and Leap are jolted out of their professional routines by a terrifying stranger --- a remorseless killer who freely manipulates the networks that regulate life in the post-Join world.

Los Angeles’s most talented burglar, Junior Bender, is in the middle of stealing one of the world’s rarest stamps from a professional killer when his luck suddenly turns sour. It takes an unexpected assist to get him out alive, but his escape sets off a chain reaction of blackmail, strong-arming and escalating crime. By the time Junior is forced to commit his third burglary of the week --- in the impregnable fortress that’s home to the ruthless studio mogul called King Maybe --- he’s beginning to wish he’d just let the killer take a crack at him.

When Woodrow Cain leaves North Carolina for New York City, he also leaves behind a wife who had left him, a daughter in the care of his sister, and a career as a police officer marred by questions surrounding his partner’s murder. He gets a job with the NYPD --- hoping to start anew --- but comes into contact with a man who calls himself Danzinger. He speaks five languages and has the appearance of a “crackpot,” yet he is the only person who can help Cain identity a body just found floating in the Hudson. Who is this mysterious man, and how does he know so much about Cain? The more Cain and Danzinger investigate, the nearer they come to the center of a citywide web of traitorous corruption from which neither of them may get out alive.

Before escape artist Harry Houdini died, he vowed he would find a way to speak to his beloved wife Bess from beyond the grave using a coded message known only to the two of them. When a widowed Bess begins seeing this code in seemingly impossible places, it becomes clear that Harry has an urgent message to convey. When the mystery finally leads Bess to the doorstep of a mysterious young photographer, she realizes that her husband’s magic may have been more than just illusion.

John Puller's mother, Jackie, vanished 30 years ago from Fort Monroe, Virginia, when Puller was just a boy. Paul Rogers has been in prison for 10 years. But 20 years before that, he was at Fort Monroe. One night three decades ago, Puller's and Rogers' worlds collided with devastating results, and the truth has been buried ever since. Until now. Military investigators arrive in the hospital room of Puller's father and reveal that Puller Sr. has been accused of murdering Jackie. Aided by his brother Robert Puller, an Air Force major, and Veronica Knox, who works for a shadowy U.S. intelligence organization, Puller begins a journey that will take him into his own past, to find the truth about his mother.

Nate Romanowski is off the grid, recuperating from wounds and trying to deal with past crimes, when he is suddenly surrounded by a small team of elite professional special operators. They’re not there to threaten him, but to make a deal. They need help destroying a domestic terror cell in Wyoming’s Red Desert, and in return they’ll make Nate’s criminal record disappear. But they are not what they seem, as Nate’s friend Joe Pickett discovers. They have a much different plan in mind, and it just may be something that takes them all down --- including Nate and Joe.

Bryn Harper, an accomplished self-help author, already has plenty to deal with. She’s still recovering from a devastating car accident that has left her haunted by recurring, smoke-filled nightmares. Worse still, she can’t shake the ominous feeling that her dreams contain a warning. In the beginning, Bryn’s husband Guy couldn’t have been more supportive. But after moving into a new house together, disturbing incidents occur, and Guy grows evasive and secretive. Then a woman hired to cater their dinner party is brutally murdered. As Bryn’s world unravels --- and yet another woman in town is slain --- she must summon her old strength to find answers and protect her own life.

Trained as a nurse, Margaret Sanger fought for social justice beside labor organizers, anarchists, socialists and other progressives, eventually channeling her energy to one singular cause: legalizing contraception. From opening the first illegal birth control clinic in America in 1916 through the founding of Planned Parenthood to the arrival of the Pill in the 1960s, Sanger sacrificed two husbands, three children and scores of lovers in her fight for sexual equality and freedom.

Brooklyn, 1947: In the midst of a blizzard, in a two-family brownstone, two babies are born minutes apart to two women. They are sisters by marriage with an impenetrable bond forged before and during that dramatic night. But as the years progress, small cracks start to appear, and their once-deep friendship begins to unravel. No one knows why, and no one can stop it. One misguided choice; one moment of tragedy. Heartbreak wars with happiness and almost --- but not quite --- wins.