In 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity. James Kaplan’s 3 SHADES OF BLUE captures how that golden era came to be, and its pinnacle with the recording of Kind of Blue. It’s a book about music, business, race, heroin, the cities that gave jazz its home, and the Black geniuses behind its rise. It’s an astonishing meditation on creativity and the strange environments where it can flourish most. It’s a book about the great forebears and founders of a lost era, and the disrupters who would take the music down truly new paths. And it’s about why the world of jazz most people know is a museum to this never-replicated period. But above all, 3 SHADES OF BLUE is a book about three very different men --- the greatness and varied fortunes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans.

Ady, a curious, sharp-witted girl, and her fierce mother, Sanite, are inseparable. Enslaved to a businessman in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the pair spend their days dreaming of a loving future and reminiscing about their family’s rebellious and storied history. When mother and daughter are separated, Ady is left hopeless and directionless until she stumbles into the Mockingbird Inn and meets Lenore, a free Black woman with whom she becomes fast friends. Lenore invites Ady to join a clandestine society of spies called the Daughters. With the courage instilled in her by Sanite --- and with help from these strong women --- Ady learns how to put herself first. So begins her journey toward liberation and imagining a new future.

1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City. But by 1998, Anita’s name has been all but forgotten --- certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student, is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret. But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist.

After a childhood filled with heartbreak, Irene, a talented artist, finds herself in a small Central American village where she checks into a beautiful but decaying lakefront hotel called La Llorona at the base of a volcano. THE BIRD HOTEL tells the story of this young American who, after suffering tragedy, restores and runs La Llorona. Along the way, we meet a rich assortment of characters who live in the village or come to stay at the hotel. While the world that Joyce Maynard brings to life on the page is rendered from her imagination, it’s one informed by the more than 20 years of which she has spent a significant amount of her time in a small Mayan indigenous village in Guatemala.

When Works Progress Administration editor Millie Lang finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal, she’s shipped off to Montana to work on the state’s American Guide Series --- travel books intended to put the nation’s destitute writers to work. Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state’s powerful Copper Kings, who don’t want their long and bloody history with union organizers aired for the rest of the country to read. More than a decade earlier, Alice Monroe created the Boxcar Library in order to deliver books to isolated mining towns. She thought she found the perfect librarian to staff the train car in Colette Durand. Now, no one in Missoula will tell Millie why both Alice and Colette went out on the inaugural journey of the Boxcar Library, but only Alice returned.

While covering the explosion of the digital sector in the early 1990s, Kara Swisher developed a long track record of digging up and reporting the facts about this new world order. Swisher has interviewed everyone who matters in tech over three decades, right when they presided over an explosion of world-changing innovation that has both helped and hurt our world. Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Bob Iger, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Meg Whitman, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg are just a few whom Swisher made sweat --- figuratively and, in Zuckerberg’s case, literally. Despite the damage she chronicles, Swisher remains optimistic about tech’s potential to help solve problems and not just create them.

John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland --- Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted. Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff and is found, unconscious and badly injured, by Ivar, who takes him home and tends to his wounds. The two men do not speak a common language, but as John builds a dictionary of Ivar’s world, they learn to communicate. And as Ivar sees himself for the first time in decades reflected through the eyes of another person, they build a fragile, unusual connection.

For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life. But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?

When Destina Rosethorn and her companions were transported to a time centuries before their birth --- to the days of the Third Dragon War --- the Graygem of Gargath brought chaos to the battlefield and changed the course of history. Upon returning to the Inn of the Last Home, where their journey began, Destina’s party discovered a world completely changed. The forces of evil now hold sway over their land. The River of Time is rising, flowing inexorably toward the present day. Destina and her friends must make one last, desperate attempt to restore time’s river to its proper channel. If they do not succeed, the altered past will sweep over the present until no trace of their old world remains.

For the last 17 years, Harry and Zara King’s lives have revolved around their only daughter, Sophie. One day, Sophie leaves the house and doesn’t come home. Six weeks later, the police are no closer to finding her than when they started. Harry and Zara have questioned everyone who has ever had any connection to Sophie, to no avail. Except there’s one house on their block --- number 210, across the street --- whose occupant refuses to break his silence. As the question mark over number 210 devolves into obsession, Harry and Zara are forced to examine their own lives. They realize they have grown apart, suffering in separate spheres of grief. And as they try to find their way back to each other, they must face the truth about their daughter: who she was, how she changed and why she disappeared.

Lana Farrar is a reclusive ex–movie star and one of the most famous women in the world. Every year, she invites her closest friends to escape the English weather and spend Easter on her idyllic private Greek island. I tell you this because you may think you know this story. You probably read about it at the time --- it caused a real stir in the tabloids, if you remember. It had all the necessary ingredients for a press sensation: a celebrity; a private island cut off by the wind…and a murder. We found ourselves trapped there overnight. Our old friendships concealed hatred and a desire for revenge. What followed was a game of cat and mouse. The night ended in violence and death, as one of us was found murdered. But who am I? My name is Elliot Chase, and I’m going to tell you a story unlike any you’ve ever heard.

On an ordinary day in an upscale Atlanta suburb, Maya is making breakfast for her two sons, when her husband drops a red-and-blue-striped envelope on the counter and asks a devastating question: Who is Sunny? Maya is sent reeling back to her childhood in Guyana --- a time when Sunny was her only name. Unbeknownst to her husband, Maya is not who she claims to be. The letter, from her long-lost sister Roshi, now threatens to expose her true identity and shatter the seemingly perfect existence Maya worked so hard to build. As she frantically weighs the impact of the truth on her future, Maya relives the details of her childhood journey to America from Guyana --- and the traumatic events that forced her to leave her past behind.

Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools, and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America 20 years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage, this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple. For the most part, these differences among the five members of the Shah family are minor irritants. But one Saturday night, the 12-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member’s perception of themselves as individuals, as community members and as Americans, and will lead each to consider: How do we define success? At what cost comes ambition? And what is our role and responsibility in the cultural mosaic of modern America?

Camryn Lane is living her dream. After years of struggle and rejection, her first novel finally has been published. Her editor is happy, and her loved ones are proud and excited for her. She’s on top of the world --- until she receives a disturbing message from an anonymous reader. Rattled by the accusations she finds there, Camryn vows to put the missive out of her mind. But the disturbing allegations spread, and soon her book is flooded with bad reviews. Camryn is relentlessly trolled online, accused of the unthinkable. It’s clear that someone is trying to ruin her --- personally and professionally. But why? As the online harassment creeps into Camryn’s personal life, she vows to find out who’s behind it. And when the abuse turns deadly, it will take everything Camryn has to unmask the enemy so intent on destroying her.

It is the summer of 1919. Now that all the men have returned from the front, Constance Haverhill has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. She is sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after rescuing the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy, from a social faux pas. Poppy runs a ladies’ motorcycle club, to which she plans to add flying lessons. She and her friends enthusiastically welcome Constance into their circle. As the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, Constance and the women of the club are forced to confront the fact that the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.

1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory as the snow falls --- a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near a different river. He is alive but still not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and tries to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts with messages he cannot understand. So begins a narrative that spans four generations of connections and consequences that ignite and reignite as the century unfolds.

Jodi Bishop is a top-notch real estate agent. Her husband, Harrison, is a middling writer who resents his wife’s success. Jodi’s father, Vic, is a very controlling man. His wife, Audrey, was herself no shrinking violet. But things changed when Audrey developed Parkinson’s 10 years ago, and now Jodi starts interviewing housekeepers to help care for her parents. She settles on Elyse Woodley, an energetic and attractive widow who seems perfect for the job. Jodi is pleased to have an ally, someone she can talk to and occasionally even confide in. Until Elyse shuts Jodi out. And Audrey’s condition worsens --- rapidly. Who is this woman suddenly wearing her mother’s jewelry? What is she after? And how far will she go to get it?

All Noemi Broussard wanted was a fresh start. With a new boyfriend who actually treats her right and a plan to move from the reservation she grew up on --- just like her beloved Uncle Louie before her --- things are finally looking up for Noemi. Until the news of her boyfriend’s apparent suicide brings her world crumbling down. But the facts about Roddy’s death just don’t add up, and Noemi isn’t the only one who suspects that something menacing might be lurking within their tribal lands. After over a decade away, Uncle Louie has returned to the reservation, bringing with him a past full of secrets, horror and what might be the key to determining Roddy’s true cause of death. Together, Noemi and Louie set out to find answers. But as they get closer to the truth, Noemi begins to wonder if it might be best for some secrets to remain buried.

After suffering a psychotic break that ruined friendships, stalled her fledgling restaurant and forced her to move out of her comfortable flat, Nancy North will do anything to get back to normal. She and her partner, Felix, move into a new flat for a fresh start. Nancy is taking her pills, seeing her therapist and avoiding unnecessary stress. But on the first day in the new flat, she hears them again --- the mysterious voices that triggered her first episode. It could be just the unfamiliar sounds of water in the pipes, or the screaming baby across the hall, but deep down she knows something more sinister is going on. Her fears are confirmed when the young woman in the downstairs flat, Kira, is found dead. Felix, her neighbors and even the police insist it’s a tragic suicide, but the pieces aren’t adding up for Nancy. Can she trust her own instincts, or is it all in her head?

Sarah and Warren’s college love story ended in a single moment. Decades later, when a chance meeting brings them together, a passion ignites. Since they parted in college, each has married, raised a family and made a career. When they meet again, Sarah is divorced and living outside New York, while Warren is still married and living in Boston. Seeing Warren sparks an awakening in Sarah, who feels emotionally alive for the first time in decades. Still, she hesitates to reclaim a chance at love after her painful divorce and years of framing her life around her children and her work. Warren has no such reservations: he wants to leave his marriage but can’t predict how his wife and daughter will react. As their affair intensifies, Sarah and Warren must confront the moral responsibilities of their love for their families and each other.

When Mona Ramsey married Lord Teddy Roughton to secure his visa --- allowing him to remain in San Francisco to fulfill his wildest dreams --- she never imagined that by age 48, she would be the sole owner of Easley House, Teddy’s grand, romantic country manor in the UK. She also didn't imagine that she’d need to open the manor’s doors to paying guests to afford the electric bill and repair the leaking roof. Yet somehow, she and her young friend, Wilfred --- whom guests assume is serving as Easley’s charming-but-clumsy butler --- and the loopy old gardener, Mr. Hargis, are making it work. This delicate equilibrium is upended when Americans Rhonda and Ernie Blaylock arrive for a weekend vacation at Easley, and Wilfred stumbles onto their terrible secret.

Investigator Sloan McPherson finds a frightened vagrant suffering from amnesia living in a Florida swamp --- and then learns he disappeared from Oregon when he was a teenager. To find out how he ended up 3,000 miles from home 30 years later, Sloan enlists the help of two brilliant colleagues. FBI agent Jessica Blackwood and scientist Theo Cray have already made an alarming connection. A female classmate of the Everglades drifter disappeared at the same time, and their high school journals reveal ties to an enigmatic figure they both called Mr. Whisper. Under his influence, they did as they were told. The case is also attracting the attention of corporate security expert Brad Trasker, whose trail is leading to the dark heart of a master manipulator. Jessica, Theo, Sloan and Brad must now bring their unique skills to the table to take down a diabolical adversary.

Grief-stricken over her mother’s death and bruised by her failure on her most recent case, Special Agent Emmeline Helliwell with the National Park Service returns to her Utah hometown to heal and regroup. She’s determined to turn in her badge and take over her mother’s bakery for a much quieter life…until the body of a childhood friend turns up in The Narrows of Zion National Park. The case is too personal for Emme to turn down, but the seemingly simple investigation turns treacherous as clues that connect to her previous case grow too glaring to ignore. When bodies start to pile up, Emme must track down the killer before they take more lives, venturing deep into Zion National Park to uncover the sordid secrets hiding beneath its stunning beauty.

London, 1924. When shy academic Lao She meets larger-than-life Judge Dee Ren Jie, his quiet life abruptly turns from books and lectures to daring chases and narrow escapes. Dee has come to London to investigate the murder of a man he’d known during World War I when serving with the Chinese Labour Corps. No sooner has Dee interviewed the grieving widow than another dead body turns up. Then another. All stabbed to death with a butterfly sword. Will Dee and Lao be able to connect the threads of the murders --- or are they next in line as victims?

Summer Sullivan, the youngest founding member of Elm Creek Quilts, has spent the last two years pursuing a master’s degree in history at the University of Chicago. Her unexpected return home to the celebrated quilter’s retreat is met with delight but also concern from her mother, Gwen; her best friend, Sarah; master quilter Sylvia; and her other colleagues. Stymied by writer’s block, Summer hasn’t finished her thesis, and she can’t graduate until she does. She finds welcome distraction in organizing an exhibit of antique quilts as a fundraiser to renovate Union Hall, the 1863 Greek Revival headquarters of the Waterford Historical Society. But Summer’s research uncovers startling facts about Waterford’s past, prompting unsettling questions about racism, economic injustice and political corruption within their community, past and present.

An up-and-coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, Piglet has lovely, loyal friends and a handsome fiancé, Kit. One of the many things Kit loves about Piglet is the delicious, unfathomably elaborate meals she’s always cooking. But when Kit confesses a horrible betrayal two weeks before they’re set to be married, Piglet finds herself suddenly…hungry. The couple decides to move forward with the wedding as planned, but as it nears and Piglet balances family expectations, pressure at work and her quest to make the perfect cake, she finds herself increasingly unsettled, behaving in ways even she can’t explain. By the day of her wedding, Piglet is undone but is also ready to look beyond the lies we sometimes tell ourselves to get by.

Running. Putting distance between himself and the relentless Night Brigade has been Nomad’s strategy for years. Staying one or two steps ahead of his pursuers by skipping through the Cosmere from one world to the next. But now, his powers too depleted to escape, Nomad finds himself trapped on Canticle, a planet that will kill anyone who doesn’t keep moving. Fleeing the fires of a sunrise that melts the very stones, he is instantly caught up in the struggle between a heartless tyrant and the brave rebels who defy him. Failure means a quick death, incinerated by the sun…or a lifetime as a mindless slave. Tormented by the consequences of his past, Nomad must fight not only for his survival but for his very soul.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find --- discarded ink, dirt, even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe --- cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled and punished, but safe. But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past --- and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened.

As an aspiring novelist in his early 20s, Cory Leadbeater was presented with an opportunity to work for a well-known writer whose identity was kept confidential. Since the tumultuous days of childhood, Cory had sought refuge from the rougher parts of life in the pages of books. Suddenly, he found himself the personal assistant to a titan of literature: Joan Didion. In the nine years that followed, Cory shared Joan’s rarefied world, transformed not only by her blazing intellect but also by her generous friendship and mentorship. But secretly, Cory was spiraling. He reeled from the death of a close friend. He spent his weekends at a federal prison visiting his father, who was serving time for fraud. He struggled day after day to write the novel that would validate him as a real writer. And meanwhile, the forces of addiction and depression loomed large.

Ten months. That’s the longest Elisa has stayed any place, constantly propelled by her fear that if she puts down roots, a family curse will turn her into a tree. But she’s grown tired of flitting from town to town and in and out of relationships. When she discovers a small town in Massachusetts where mysterious forces make it impossible for the residents to leave, she hopes she can change her fate. As Elisa learns about the town’s history, she understands more about the women in her family, who seem doomed to never get what they want. Now she believes she’s stuck, too. Is that a patch of bark on her arm? But her neighbor’s collection of pet birds sings secrets that Elisa can almost understand --- secrets she must unravel in order to be truly alive.

Ward D is the hospital's mental health unit, and as a medical student, Amy is required to gain experience on the floor. But little do her colleagues know that it may force her to confront a past she has fought hard to forget. The night starts. The countdown begins. As the hours tick by, Amy grows increasingly convinced that something terrible is happening within the ward's tightly secured walls. When patients and staff start to vanish without a trace, it becomes clear that everyone on the unit is in grave danger. Amy never wanted to spend the night on Ward D. Now she might not make it out alive.

New York City, 1911. Finding herself at a crossroads with both her marriage and her writing, Edith Wharton makes the decision to leave America, her publisher and her loveless marriage. And then, dashing novelist David Graham Phillips --- a writer with often notorious ideas about society and women’s place in it --- is shot to death outside the Princeton Club. Edith herself met the man only once, when the two formed a mutual distaste over tea in the Palm Court of the Belmont hotel. When Phillips is killed, Edith's life takes another turn. His sister is convinced Graham was killed by someone determined to stop the publication of his next book, which promised to uncover secrets that powerful people rather would have stayed hidden. Though unconvinced, Edith is curious. What kind of book could push someone to kill?

Whimbrel House is changing. Merritt and Hulda are raising a family. Owein has signed a marriage contract with the magically compatible Lady Cora, a heavyweight of British nobility who’s an ocean away. And the lovely shape-shifting druid Fallon makes a distractingly fetching friend for Owein. But another change is in the air. The greatest wizard of the millennium, Silas Hogwood, is back --- after five years dead. New body, same foul scent, and driven by madness and revenge. Fearing he isn’t strong enough to fend off Silas, Owein seeks Cora’s help and influence in England. Queen Victoria dispatches her League of Magicians, including her personal necromancer, to aid in Owein’s defense. As magic, both good and evil, converges on Blaugdone Island, Owein realizes how harrowing the forces against them are.

It’s November 5th, and a woman awakens to a nightmare. Bound and gagged, she lies trapped in the heart of a towering bonfire. As the smoke thickens, panic sets in; she’s moments away from being engulfed in flames. How did it come to this? Rewind 11 months. Margot, a faded TV star, and her long-suffering friend, Anna, watch as glamorous Liv and her flawless family move into their street. The three women soon fabricate the perfect pretense of friendship, but each harbors her own deadly secret --- and newcomer Liv senses something is terribly wrong beneath the polished exteriors. As cracks widen in the veneer of perfection and lies escalate out of control, tension ignites. Bonfire Night is approaching, and someone is set to burn. But who will it be?