January 1905: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson are summoned by Holmes' brother, Mycroft, to undertake a clandestine investigation. An agent of the British Secret Service has been found floating in the Thames, carrying a manuscript smuggled into England at the cost of her life. The pages purport to be the minutes of a meeting of a secret group intent on nothing less than taking over the world. Based on real events, the adventure takes the famed duo --- in the company of a bewitching woman --- aboard the Orient Express from Paris into the heart of Tsarist Russia, where Holmes and Watson attempt to trace the origins of this explosive document. On their heels are desperate men of unknown allegiance, determined to prevent them from achieving their task.

New York City is still regaining its balance in the years following 9/11, when four twenty-somethings --- Tess, Tazio, David and Angelica --- meet in a bar, each yearning for something: connection, recognition, a place in the world, a cause to believe in. Nearly 15 years later, as their city recalibrates in the wake of the 2016 election, their bond has endured --- but almost everything else has changed. With tensions rising on the national stage, the four friends are forced to face the reality of their shared histories, especially a long-ago betrayal that has shaped every aspect of their friendship.

In August 1974, after his involvement in the Watergate scandal could no longer be denied, Richard Nixon became the first and only president to resign from office in anticipation of certain impeachment. The year preceding that moment was filled with shocking revelations and bizarre events, full of power politics, legal jujitsu and high-stakes showdowns, and with head-shaking surprises every day. As the country’s top reporters worked to discover the truth, the public was overwhelmed by the confusing and almost unbelievable stories about activities in the Oval Office. Tom Brokaw, the young NBC News White House correspondent at the time, gives us a nuanced and thoughtful chronicle, recalling the players, the strategies, and the highs and lows of the scandal that brought down a president.

Orla Cadden is a budding novelist stuck in a dead-end job, writing clickbait about movie-star hookups and influencer yoga moves. Then Orla meets Floss --- a striving, wannabe A-lister --- who comes up with a plan for launching them both into the high-profile lives they dream about. Thirty-five years later, in a closed California village where government-appointed celebrities live every moment of the day on camera, a woman named Marlow discovers a shattering secret about her past. Despite her massive popularity, Marlow dreams of fleeing the corporate sponsors who would do anything to keep her on-screen. When she learns that her whole family history is based on a lie, Marlow finally summons the courage to run in search of the truth, no matter the risks.

Elliott Maraniss, David’s father, a WWII veteran who had commanded an all-black company in the Pacific, was spied on by the FBI, named as a communist by an informant, called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, fired from his newspaper job, and blacklisted for five years. Yet he never lost faith in America and emerged on the other side with his family and optimism intact. In a sweeping drama that moves from the Depression and Spanish Civil War to the HUAC hearings and end of the McCarthy era, Maraniss weaves his father’s story through the lives of his inquisitors and defenders as they struggle with the vital 20th-century issues of race, fascism, communism and first amendment freedoms.

Laurel and Daphne Wolfe are identical, inseparable redheaded twins who share an obsession with words. As adults making their way in 1980s Manhattan, their verbal infatuation continues, but this love, which has always bound them together, begins instead to push them apart. Daphne, copy editor and grammar columnist, devotes herself to preserving the dignity and elegance of Standard English. Laurel, who gives up teaching kindergarten to write poetry, is drawn to the polymorphous, chameleon nature of the written and spoken word. Their fraying twinship finally shreds completely when the sisters go to war over custody of their most prized family heirloom: Merriam Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition.

HUNTER’S MOON is set in Michigan’s wild, starkly beautiful Upper Peninsula, where a cast of recurring characters move into and out of each other’s lives --- building friendships, facing loss, confronting violence, trying to bury the past or seeking to unearth it. Once-a-year lovers, old high-school buddies on a hunting trip, a college professor and his wayward son, a middle-aged man and his grief-stricken father, come together, break apart and, if they’re fortunate, find a way forward.

In 1815, Annabella Milbanke married Lord Byron. Just one year later, she fled, taking with her their baby daughter, the future Ada Lovelace. Byron himself escaped into exile and died as a revolutionary hero in 1824. Brought up by a mother who became one of the most progressive reformers of Victorian England, Byron’s little girl was introduced to mathematics as a means of calming her wild spirits. Educated by some of the most learned minds in England, she combined that scholarly discipline with a rebellious heart and a visionary imagination. Drawing on fascinating new material, Miranda Seymour reveals the ways in which Byron, long after his death, continued to shape the lives and reputations of both his wife and his daughter.

1405: The daughter of a wealthy merchant, Anneke Sheldrake suddenly finds her family bankrupted when her father’s ship is swept away at sea. Forced to find a way to provide for herself and her siblings, Anneke rejects an offer of marriage from a despised cousin and instead turns to her late mother’s family business: brewing ale. Armed with her mother’s recipes, she then makes a bold deal with her father’s aristocratic employer, putting her home and family at risk. Thanks to her fierce determination, Anneke’s brew wins a following and begins to turn a profit. But her rise threatens some in her community, and those closest to her are left to pay the price. As Anneke slowly pieces her life together again, she finds an unlikely ally in a London brothel owner.

In this second thrilling installment of the Gunnie Rose series, Lizbeth Rose is hired onto a new crew for a seemingly easy protection job: transporting a crate into Dixie, just about the last part of the former United States of America she wants to visit. But what seemed like a straightforward job turns into a massacre as the crate is stolen. Up against a wall in Dixie, where social norms have stepped back into the last century, Lizbeth has to go undercover with an old friend to retrieve the crate as what’s inside can spark a rebellion...if she can get it back in time.

This multigenerational memoir explores author Elizabeth Wilcox's maternal history of repeated trauma, separation, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and their impact on mental health. Set against a 20-year dialogue with her mother Barbara, who suffers from long undiagnosed PTSD, THE LONG TAIL OF TRAUMA opens with the birth of Wilcox's illegitimate grandmother Violet to a German house servant outside London in 1904. With her mother’s encouragement, she goes on to trace the lives of Violet and Barbara, both of whom are deeply impacted by maternal separation and the complex trauma they have endured because of war. Through a dual timeline that is both present day and historic, Wilcox weaves together the documented and imagined voices of the women who precede her.

Two months a widow, Mallory Dent has made the impulsive decision to pack up and move on. In remote McNamara, nestled in the northern mountains, she can escape her grief, guilt and pain. But the day Mallory arrives, death follows her. A woman’s body is found floating in Loss Lake --- and it’s not the first death on these shores. Locals talk about a monster in the depths with an almost disturbing reverence. Sergeant Joel Benson understands Mallory’s unease. Years ago, his own brother was killed in the home Mallory now owns. But that was just a tragic accident. Wasn’t it? The more Mallory investigates, the more fearful she becomes. Maybe there are monsters in McNamara. Maybe some have followed her there.

Before blogs even existed, Anna Quindlen became a go-to writer on the joys and challenges of family, motherhood and modern life, in her nationally syndicated column. Now she’s taking the next step and going full nana in the pages of this lively, beautiful and moving book about being a grandmother. Quindlen offers thoughtful and telling observations about her new role, no longer mother and decision-maker but secondary character and support to the parents of her grandson. She writes, “Where I once led, I have to learn to follow.” Eventually a close friend provides words to live by: “Did they ask you?”

Operation Treadstone has nearly ruined Adam Hayes. The top-secret CIA Black Ops program trained him to be an all but invincible assassin, but it also cost him his family and any chance at a normal life. Working as a carpenter in rural Washington state, Adam thinks he has left Treadstone in the past, until he receives a mysterious email from a former colleague, and soon after is attacked by an unknown hit team at his job site. Adam must regain the skills that Treadstone taught him --- lightning reflexes and a cold conscience --- in order to discover who the would-be killers are and why they have come after him now. His search will unearth secrets in the highest levels of government and pull him back into the shadowy world he worked so hard to forget.

Helen arrives in Appalachian Ohio full of love and her boyfriend’s ideas for living off the land. But with winter coming, he calls it quits. Helped by Rudy --- her government-questioning, wisdom-spouting, seasonal-affective-disordered boss --- and a neighbor couple, Helen makes it to spring. Those neighbors, Karen and Lily, are awaiting the arrival of their first child, which means their time at the Women’s Land Trust must end. So Helen invites the new family to throw in with her --- they’ll make a life that sustains them (if barely) for years. Then young Perley decides he wants to go to school. And Rudy sets up a fruit-tree nursery on the pipeline easement edging their land. The outside world is brought clamoring into their makeshift family.

The characters in SUDDEN TRAVELER walk, drive, dream and fly, trying to reconcile themselves with their journeys through life, death and love. Science fiction meets folktale and philosophy meets mortality. A woman with a new generation of pacemaker chooses to shut it down in the Lakeland, the site of her strongest memories. A man repatriated in the near east hears the name of an old love called and must unpack history’s dark suitcase. From the new world-waves of female anger and resistance, a mythical creature evolves. And in the woods on the border between warring countries, an old well facilitates a dictator’s downfall, before he gains power.

Cassandra King was leading a quiet life as a professor, divorced “Sunday wife” of a preacher, and debut novelist when she met Pat Conroy. Their friendship bloomed into a tentative, long-distance relationship. Pat and Cassandra ultimately married, partly because Pat hated the commute from coastal South Carolina to her native Alabama. It was a union that would last 18 years, until the beloved literary icon’s death from pancreatic cancer in 2016. In TELL ME A STORY, the woman he called King Ray looks back at her love affair with a natural-born storyteller whose lust for life was fueled by a passion for literature, food and the Carolina Lowcountry that was his home.

Texas Ranger Rory Yates is not keen for hero status. But it's unavoidable once his girlfriend, country singer Willow Dawes, writes a song about his bravery. Rory escapes his newfound fame when he's sent to the remote West Texas town of Rio Lobo, a municipality with two stoplights. And now, according to the Chief of Police, it has one too many Texas Rangers. Rio Lobo Detective Ariana Delgado is the one who requested Rory, and the only person who believes that a local councilwoman's seemingly accidental death is a murder. Then Rory begins to uncover a tangle of small-town secrets, favors and lies as crooked as Texas law is straight. To get to the truth before more people die, Rory is forced to take liberties with the investigation.

Eager to cheer up her recently widowed gran, Cassie Fitzgerald persuades Lissbeg Library to set up a Skype book club, linking readers on Ireland's Finfarran Peninsula with the US town of Resolve, home to generations of Finfarran emigrants. But when the club decides to read a detective novel, old conflicts on both sides of the ocean are exposed and hidden love affairs come to light. As secrets emerge, Cassie fears she may have done more harm than good. Will the truths she uncovers about her granny Pat's marriage affect her own hopes of finding love? Is Pat, who's still struggling with the death of her husband, about to fall out with her oldest friend, Mary? Or could the book club itself hold the key to a triumphant transatlantic happy ending?

At the age of five, Megan Phelps-Roper began protesting homosexuality and other alleged vices alongside fellow members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Founded by her grandfather and consisting almost entirely of her extended family, the tiny group would gain worldwide notoriety for its pickets at military funerals and celebrations of death and tragedy. Soon, however, dialogue on Twitter caused her to begin doubting the church’s leaders and message: If humans were sinful and fallible, how could the church itself be so confident about its beliefs? As she digitally jousted with critics, she started to wonder if sometimes they had a point --- and then she began exchanging messages with a man who would help change her life.

Draw near and listen, or else time is at an end. The watering holes of the Plain are drying up, the fearsome fanghorn grow more numerous, and bad omens abound. Wulfgar, a leader of the Altaii people, must contend with twin queens, warlords, prophets and magic in hopes of protecting his people and securing their future. Elspeth, a visitor from another world, holds the answers, but first Wulfgar must learn to ask the right questions. But what if the knowledge that saves the Altaii will also destroy them?

After a disastrous blind date, Darcy Lowell is desperate to stop her well-meaning brother from playing matchmaker ever again. So she fibs and says her latest set up was a success. Elle Jones, an astrologer, dreams of finding her soul mate but knows it is not Darcy, who is way too analytical, punctual and skeptical for someone as free-spirited as herself. When Darcy’s brother --- and Elle's new business partner --- expresses how happy he is that they hit it off, Elle is baffled. Darcy begs Elle to play along, and she agrees to pretend they’re dating. But Darcy must help Elle navigate her own overbearing family during the holidays, and their arrangement expires on New Year’s Eve. The last thing they expect is to develop real feelings during a faux relationship.