When a minor criminal is murdered in the smallest residential square in London, elderly heiress and landlady Celeste van Duren recruits two of her tenants to investigate. Her cleaner, Audrey, knows everyone and is liked by all, while failed writer Lewis is known by no one. He hates his job and his life, and he’s not that fond of Audrey either --- but Celeste is persuasive. As they hunt for clues in and around the Square, they discover everyone has something to hide, including their fellow residents. Audrey and Lewis must find a way to work together if they’re to find the killer in their midst. Assuming, of course, there’s just the one.

Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they attempt to hide their identities from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives. Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears. Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress and is desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own.

New York City, 1950. Dreams come true for radio personality Maggie Lane when she gets her big break in the exciting new world of television. “The Maggie Lane Baking Show” is on the air. All she has to do is act like the ideal housewife, create sumptuous desserts, charm the show’s sponsors, and sign a morality clause to ensure that her girl-next-door image remains untarnished. Although newlywed Maggie has never baked so much as a cookie and knows even less about maintaining a home, keeping up appearances is a necessary ingredient for success. Easy. She has a supportive husband and a legion of fans who can’t wait to know her better and better, week after week. That’s what she’s afraid of. Off camera, cracks are showing in her marriage, an old lover makes an unexpected return, and there are secrets from the past that could ruin everything Maggie has worked for.

Constance Greene confronts Manhattan’s most dangerous serial killer, Enoch Leng, bartering for her sister's life. But she is betrayed and turned away empty-handed, incandescent with rage. Unknown to Leng, Pendergast’s brother, Diogenes, appears unexpectedly, offering to help --- for mysterious reasons of his own. Disguised as a cleric, Diogenes establishes himself in New York's notorious Five Points slum, manipulating events like a chess master, watching Leng’s every move…and awaiting his own chance to strike. Meanwhile, as Pendergast focuses on saving the unstable Constance in her fanatical quest for vengeance, she strikes out on her own: to rescue her beloved siblings from a tragic fate and take savage retribution on Leng. But Leng is one step ahead and has a surprise for them all.

Celebrated writer Alma Cruz doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories --- literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma's characters.

War has come. The fire god Hseth is leading an unstoppable army south, consuming everything in her path. Middren's only hope of survival is to unify allies and old foes against a common enemy. Elo navigates an uneasy alliance with Arren --- his friend, his enemy and his king. Now they each must decide how much they're willing to sacrifice to turn the tides of war. Meanwhile, Inara joins her mother on their ship, the Silverswift, to seek aid. Still grappling with her powers, Inara must reconcile who she is and where she belongs, while Skediceth has to question if their bond will be enough to keep them safe. Kissen has no allegiance to the old ways of Middren. But as she tries to find her family, she is forced to question what, and whose, future she is fighting for.

Chloe and Sloane Morgan were only children when their mother was the second victim of the Bayside Strangler. Now, after spending 15 years trying to discover his identity, the sisters have suddenly vanished. Were they getting too close to the truth? The police consider their interest in the crime to be just a coincidence and have little motivation to pursue the cold case. Armed with the box of photos, videos, police reports and notes gathered by the sisters over the years --- plus the extraordinary senses from being blind before recovering her sight via a revolutionary surgical procedure --- Kendra Michaels follows the sisters’ trail of clues. Little does she realize that her search is about to unleash a long-dormant killer on San Diego.

On prom night, Caroline Winterfield walked away from the ruins of an abandoned mansion called Haven Cliff and into the woods…never to be seen again. Only her three best friends know what really happened. On the 25th anniversary of that night, Midge, Kelly and Talia reunite at Haven Cliff, now a gleaming architectural jewel. But they aren’t alone. Someone is watching. Someone who knows what really happened to Caroline --- and to the man who now lies dead a stone’s throw from where she was last seen. Police detective Midge knows she’s dealing with a murder the moment she sees the item clutched in his lifeless hand. Only three other people in the world would grasp its significance. That means Kelly and Talia are either involved or in danger, because Caroline is long gone. Or is she?

In a small Alaska town, a boy is found with his throat ripped out and all the blood drained from his body. The inhabitants of Deadhart know who’s responsible: a member of the Colony, an ostracized community of vampyrs living in an old mine settlement deep in the woods. Detective Barbara Atkins, a specialist in vampyr killings, is called in to officially determine if this is a Colony killing --- and authorize a cull. Determined to find the truth, she enlists the help of a former Deadhart sheriff, Jenson Tucker, whose investigation into the previous murder almost cost him his life. Since then, Tucker has become a recluse. But he knows the Colony better than almost anyone. As the pair delve into the town’s history, they uncover secrets darker than they could have imagined. And then another body is found.

Not only has Faye Walker scored one of the most highly coveted internships in all of Wall Street, she also has just met the head-over-heels love of her life. With her natural-born gift for numbers and a work ethic that knows no bounds, Faye is a shoo-in for a full-time position at the illustrious merchant bank Greene Brothers Hale. Then, just as she awaits her offer and her signing bonus, a treacherous betrayal arrives to shatter Faye’s plans and her young life. But what her high finance masters-of-the-universe bosses don’t know is that Faye isn’t like any of the other interns. She now has a new plan --- one that involves Swiss watch timing, nerves of steel, and $10 million in cold hard Wall Street cash.

Across Italy there are many half-empty towns, nearly abandoned by those who migrate to the coast or to cities. The beautiful, crumbling hilltop town of Becchina is among them, but its mayor has taken drastic measures to rebuild --- selling abandoned homes to anyone in the world for a single Euro, as long as the buyer promises to live there for at least five years. It’s a no-brainer for American couple Tommy and Kate Puglisi. Both work remotely, and Becchina is the home of Tommy’s grandparents, his closest living relatives. It feels like a romantic adventure, an opportunity the young couple would be crazy not to seize. But from the moment they move in, they feel a shadow has fallen on them. Tommy’s grandmother is furious, even a little frightened, when she realizes which house they’ve bought.

Set in a not-too-distant America, I CHEERFULLY REFUSE is the tale of a bereaved and pursued musician embarking under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved bookselling wife. Rainy, an endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs and remote islands of the inland sea. Encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, crumbled infrastructure and a lawless society. As his innate guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his strengthening wake.

For the past five years, Ryan Richardson has relived that terrible night. The car door ripping open. The crushing blow to the head. The hands yanking him from the vehicle. His girlfriend Ali’s piercing scream as she is taken. With no trace of Ali or the car, a cloud of suspicion hangs over Ryan. He’s never charged, though that doesn’t matter to the podcasters and internet trolls. Now, Ryan has changed his last name and entered law school. While on a summer trip abroad to Italy with his law-school classmates, Ryan gets a call from his father: Ali's car has finally been found, submerged in a lake in his hometown. Inside are two dead men and a cryptic note with five words written on the envelope in Ali’s handwriting: If something happens to me…  Then, halfway around the world, Ryan sees the man who has haunted his dreams since that night.

An angry mother turns into a literal monster. A company in San Francisco can scrub your entire reputation and create a new one…for a price. A failed actor on a reality show turns into an unlikely world savior. And much more. Through each of these 12 interconnected stories, Katie Flynn masterfully blends people, places and even realities. From a powerful new literary voice to be reckoned with, this collection will stay with you long after you turn the final page.

Engineers across the world were puzzling over how to build a powered flying machine --- and Wilbur and Orville Wright wanted in on the challenge. But their younger sister, Katharine, knew they couldn't do it without her. The three siblings made a pact: the three of them would solve the problem of human flight. As her brothers obsessed over blueprints and risked life and limb testing new models, Katharine became the mastermind behind the scenes of their inventions. And in 1903, the Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight of humankind. But at the height of their success, tragedy wrenched the Wright family apart…and forced Katharine to make an impossible choice that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

It’s been more than a decade since the world has come undone, and Sasha Severn has returned to her childhood home to find the mythic research that her father, the infamous Last Beekeeper, hid before he was incarcerated. There, Sasha is confronted with a group of squatters who have claimed the quiet, idyllic farm as a way to escape the horrific conditions of state housing. While she feels threatened by their presence at first, the friends soon become her newfound family. But just as she settles into her new life, Sasha witnesses the impossible. She sees a honeybee, presumed extinct. People who claim to see bees are ridiculed and silenced for reasons Sasha doesn't understand, but she can't shake the feeling that this impossible bee is connected to her father's missing research.

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. It’s the early 1960s, and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans, the lonely, brilliant, Nobel Prize-nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with her mind. True chemistry results. But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later, Elizabeth finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show. Her unusual approach to cooking proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.

Tildy Barrows, Head Curator of a beautiful archival library in San Francisco, is meticulously dedicated to the century’s worth of inventory housed in her beloved Beaux Art building. But her life takes an unexpected turn when she learns the library is on the verge of bankruptcy and discovers two exquisite never-before-seen dollhouses. After finding clues hidden within these remarkable miniatures, Tildy sets out to decipher the secret history of the dollhouses, aiming to salvage her cherished library in the process. Her journey introduces her to a world of ambitious and gifted women in Belle Époque Paris, a group of scarred World War I veterans in the English countryside, and Walt Disney’s bustling Burbank studio in the 1950s. As Tildy unravels the mystery, she finds not only inspiring, hidden history, but also a future for herself --- and an astonishing familial revelation.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and shortly afterward is told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to determine if time travel is feasible --- for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time. She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as “1847,” or Commander Graham Gore. Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined.

1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France. This group of international women help rebuild destroyed French communities just miles from the front. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen --- children’s libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles and trains the first French female librarians. Then she disappears. 1987: When NYPL librarian and aspiring writer Wendy Peterson stumbles across a passing reference to Jessie Carson in the archives, she becomes consumed with learning her fate. Eventually she discovers that they have more in common than their work at New York’s famed library, but she has no idea their paths will converge in surprising ways across time.

In McFalls County, local crime boss Gareth Burroughs runs everything on the mountain. And Nelson “Nails” McKenna has been his enforcer since he was a teenager, though his heart is not really in the dirty work. Then one night in a local roadhouse, Nails goes too far, defending a woman, and even Burroughs’ reach can’t get him out of this one. With a dead body and countless witnesses, Nails and the woman become fugitives on the run, and unlikely partners. But on the road to Jacksonville, where a possible escape awaits, there’s more than one interested party on the pair’s trail, and the glimpse they had of getting away scot-free suddenly seems elusive. In the end, Nails must make one final stand for his freedom --- or pay with both of their lives.

On a foggy winter morning, high school kids Luca and Emma discover the impossible: the wreck of an 18th-century ship stranded in a flower field. Emma enters the hatch on the deck and is never seen again. And she isn’t the last to disappear. Soon a government agency begins to investigate, determined to uncover the ship’s secrets before a media storm erupts. They enlist Robert Grim, a retired specialist of the occult, to unravel the mystery, and he soon realizes the ship could be a harbinger of an ancient doom awakened under the sea. In a maelstrom of international intrigue and pure terror, Grim and Luca must race against time as they come face to face with an open doorway to the apocalypse.

Somewhere in New York City, Lata Murthy knows there is another person with her name living a much more interesting life. That's because Lata often receives the other Lata's emails. Lata's own life feels pathetic in comparison. So one day, she decides to take on this other Lata's identity and jumps headfirst into the glamorous New York lifestyle. At first, it all feels like a fairy tale. All of Lata's NYC dreams come true: she gets a higher-paying job, moves into a chic Chelsea apartment, and is embraced by an elite friend group that includes Rajeev, an up-and-coming fashion designer intent on making a splash at New York Fashion Week. But Lata doesn't just catch the attention of the handsome fashion designer --- she also incurs the wrath of the mysterious woman she is impersonating. And this Other Lata wants Lata to pay...but in the oddest of ways.

Darcy Gray is a successful influencer with her blog, The Gray Zone. She and her husband, department store magnate Charles Gray, are a power couple in Manhattan and on the international stage. To celebrate 20 years of marriage, Darcy impulsively flies to Rome to surprise Charlie, who is tending to business interests there. Instead, she gets the shock of her life, which upends her whole world. Still reeling, Darcy flees to Paris to see her daughter, Zoe. But a rapidly escalating worldwide health crisis forces her to remain indefinitely in France. She finds a welcoming refuge in the home of aging French movie star Sybille Carton. There, she meets a widowed American engineer and former Marine who is also stranded. Bill Thompson is kind and courteous but also carries an air of mystery about him.

For nearly 30 years, Nell has kept a childhood promise never to reveal what she and Evie found tucked inside a copy of JANE EYRE in their mother's bookcase --- a record of Evie's birth naming a stranger as her mother. But lately, Nell has been haunted by hazy memories of their early life in Mississippi, which their reclusive mother, Hazel, has kept shrouded in secrecy. Evie recalls nothing before their house on Clay Mountain in North Carolina, but Nell remembers abrupt moves, odd accommodations, and the rainy night a man in a dark coat and a hat pulled low climbed their porch steps with a very little girl --- Evie --- and then left without her. In dual storylines, Nell, who is 42 in 1971, reaches into the past to uncover dangerous, long-buried secrets, and Becca, a young mother in the early 1930s, presses ahead --- each moving toward 1934, the catastrophic year that would forever link them.

If any man can do the impossible, it’s Richard Sharpe. And the impossible is exactly what the formidable Captain Sharpe is asked to do when he’s sent on an undercover mission to a small village in the Spanish countryside, far behind enemy lines. For the quiet, remote village, sitting high above the Almaraz bridge, is about to become the center of a battle for the future of Europe. Two French armies march towards the bridge, one from the North and one from the South. If they meet, the British are lost. Only Sharpe's small group of men --- with their cunning and courage to rely on --- stand in their way. But they're rapidly outnumbered, enemies are hiding in plain sight, and as the French edge ever closer to the frontline, time is running out.

Paris, 1885: Aubry Tourvel, a spoiled and stubborn nine-year-old girl, comes across a wooden puzzle ball on her walk home from school. She tosses it over the fence, only to find it in her backpack that evening. Days later, at the family dinner table, she starts to bleed to death. When medical treatment only makes her worse, she flees to the outskirts of the city, where she realizes that it is this very act of movement that keeps her alive. So begins her lifelong journey on the run from her condition, which won’t allow her to stay anywhere for longer than a few days or return to a place where she’s already been. But the longer Aubry wanders and the more desperate she is to share her life with others, the clearer it becomes that the world she travels through may not be quite the same as everyone else’s.

Sara Marsala barely knows who she is anymore after the failure of her business and marriage. On top of that, her beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away. But this opens an escape from her life and a window into the past by way of a plane ticket to Sicily, a deed to a possibly valuable plot of land and a bombshell family secret. Rosie believes that Sara’s great-grandmother Serafina, the family matriarch who was left behind while her husband worked in America, didn’t die of illness as family lore has it. She was murdered. Thus begins a twist-filled adventure that takes Sara all over the picturesque Italian countryside as she races to solve a mystery and learn the story of Serafina. As she discovers more about Serafina, she also realizes she is coming head-to-head with the same menacing forces that took down her great-grandmother.

After losing her baby, Agnes is called to the great manor house to nurse the local lord’s baby boy. But something is wrong with the child: his nails grow too fast, his skin smells of soil, and his eyes remind her of the dark forest. As he grows into a boy, then into a man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Trees wither at the roots, fruits rot on their branches, and the town turns against him. The man takes a wife, who bears him a son. But tragedy strikes in cycles, and his family is forced to consider their own malignancy --- until wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague, every woman he touches becomes a ghost. The ghosts become a chorus, and they call urgently to our narrator as she tries to explain, in our very real world, exactly what has happened to her.

Zeke and Lexi thought it would be just a night of fun. They had no intentions of seeing each other again. Zeke is only in town for the weekend to buy back his late father’s houseboat. Lexi has no time for dating when she needs to help take care of her best friend's daughter. Going back home with a stranger seems like a perfect escape from their problems. But a miscommunication in the dark, foggy night means that no one tied the houseboat to the dock. The next morning, Zeke and Lexi realize all they can see is miles and miles of water. With just a few provisions on the idle boat, Zeke and Lexi must figure out how to get back home. But aside from their survival, they’re facing another challenge. Because when you’re stuck together for days on end, it gives you a lot of time to get to know someone --- and to fall in love with them.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and they are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Life has been good for Vera Wong. Her teahouse is bustling, and her son, Tilly, has a girlfriend. All thanks to Vera, because Tilly's girlfriend is none other than Officer Selena Gray --- the very same Officer Gray she had harassed while investigating the murder at her shop. Vera comes across a distressed young woman who is looking for a missing friend. Fortunately, while cat-sitting at Tilly and Selena's, Vera finds Selena's briefcase. Inside is a file about the death of an enigmatic influencer --- who also happens to be the friend the young woman was looking for. Online, Xander had it all, including a burgeoning career as a social media influencer. The only problem is, after his body is fished out of Mission Bay, the police can't seem to actually identify him. Who is Xander Lin? Nobody knows. Every contact is a dead end. Everybody claims not to know him, not even his parents.

A VIEW FROM THE STARS features a range of short works from the past three decades of New York Times bestselling author Cixin Liu's prolific career, putting his nonfiction essays and short stories side-by-side for the first time. This collection includes essays and interviews that shed light on Liu's experiences as a reader, writer and lover of science fiction throughout his life, as well as short fiction that gives glimpses into the evolution of his imaginative voice over the years.

November 1943. Stalin is pressing the Allies to open a second front in Europe in order to ease the pressure on the bloody grinding war in the East. Roosevelt and Churchill agree to meet the Soviet premier in Tehran. Wild Bill Donovan, the charismatic leader of the OSS, has intelligence that someone is planning to assassinate either or both of the Western leaders at the conference. He sends his best agent, Dick Canidy, to thwart the plan. But how can he do that when he doesn't even know if the killer is a Nazi or an Ally?

Former London police officer Rose Campbell has been estranged from her daughter, Lou, for almost a decade. But when Lou disappears from a remote beach in Western Australia --- and the police suspect her of kidnapping the two young children in her care --- Rose is asked to help bring Lou home. This is the final case in DSS Mal Blackwood's illustrious career, and there's a lot riding on it. The missing children are heirs to the Fisher property empire, and while their multimillionaire grandfather is breathing down Blackwood's neck, the media storm is intensifying. Faced with a deluge of evidence and accusations, Blackwood doesn't know who he can trust. Rose arrives in Australia intent on proving her daughter's innocence. Meanwhile, as Blackwood begins to expose the Fishers' secrets, the investigation takes a dark turn.

When Brian Cashman arrived in the Bronx as an intern in 1986, he discovered a team in chaos, run on impulse and emotion, and lacking the sheen that had defined the Yankees in earlier eras. Decades later, Cashman had risen through the ranks of the front office, earned the trust of the Steinbrenner family, and become the longest-serving GM in the Yankees’ storied history, helping to transform the Yankees to glory with a string of World Series championships and an unmatched streak of winning seasons. With unprecedented inside access and featuring exclusive interviews with Cashman, owner Hal Steinbrenner, top front-office executives, and current Yankee stars and coaches, award-winning baseball journalist Andy Martino gives fans a view from the GM’s seat that we would never normally see.