By June 1941, Germany’s war machine looked unstoppable. The Nazi blitzkrieg had taken Poland, France and the Netherlands with shocking speed. The Luftwaffe had bombed London, while German U-boats wrought havoc on Allied shipping on the Atlantic. And yet, as James Holland shows in THE ALLIES STRIKE BACK, cracks were already appearing in Germany’s apparent invincibility. When the Americans entered the war in the west, Hitler was bogged down with a savage war of attrition as he attempted to invade the Soviet Union. The Allies soon stormed to victory in North Africa and escalated the bombing of Germany, fatefully turning the tides of the war and threatening the morale of the Third Reich.

Told in three distinct sections, ASYMMETRY explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography and justice. The first section, “Folly,” tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer. By contrast, “Madness” is narrated by Amar, an Iraqi-American man who, on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan, is detained by immigration officers and spends the last weekend of 2008 in a holding room in Heathrow. These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda.

It is 1792, and Europe is seized by political turmoil and violence. Lizzie Fawkes has grown up in Radical circles where each step of the French Revolution is followed with eager idealism. But she has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a property developer who is heavily invested in Bristol’s housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war. Soon his plans for a magnificent terrace built above the 200-foot drop of the Gorge come under threat. Tormented and striving Diner believes that Lizzie’s independent, questioning spirit must be coerced and subdued.

Overlooked by his father and overshadowed by his war-hero brother, Bobby Kennedy was the perpetual underdog. When he had the chance to become a naval officer like Jack, Bobby turned it down, choosing instead to join the Navy as a common sailor. It was a life-changing experience that led him to connect with voters from all walks of life. They were the people who turned out for him in his 1968 campaign. RFK would prove himself to be the rarest of politicians --- both a pragmatist who knew how to get the job done and an unwavering idealist who could inspire millions. Drawing on extensive research and interviews, Chris Matthews pulls back the curtain on the public and private worlds of Robert Francis Kennedy.

Semi-retired private detective Molly Murphy Sullivan is suffering from depression after a miscarriage following her adventure in San Francisco during the earthquake of 1906. She and her husband, Daniel, are invited for Christmas at a mansion on the Hudson, and they gratefully accept. Not long after they arrive, however, they learn that the host couple's young daughter wandered out into the snow 10 years ago and was never seen again. Molly can identify with the mother's pain at never knowing what happened to her child, but she slowly begins to suspect that the occupants of the house know more than they are letting on. Then, on Christmas Eve, there is a knock at the door and a young girl stands there. "I'm Charlotte," she says. "I've come home."

In the fallout of the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee --- and as chaos threatened to consume the party's convention --- Democrats turned to a familiar figure to right the ship: Donna Brazile. What Brazile found at the DNC was unlike anything she had experienced before --- and much worse than is commonly known. The party was beset by infighting, scandal and hubris, while reeling from a brazen and wholly unprecedented attempt by a foreign power to influence the presidential election. Plus, its candidate, Hillary Clinton, faced an opponent who broke every rule in the political playbook. Packed with never-before-reported revelations about what went down in 2016, HACKS is equal parts campaign thriller, memoir and roadmap for the future.

Local truck driver Ben Jones, still in mourning over a heartbreaking loss, is just trying to get through another season of treacherous roads and sudden snowfall without an accident. But then he finds a mute Hispanic child who has been abandoned at a seedy truck stop along his route, far from civilization and bearing a note that simply reads “Please Ben. Watch my son. His name is Juan.” And then at the bottom, a few more hastily scribbled words: “Bad Trouble. Tell no one.” Despite deep misgivings, and without any hint of who this child is or the grave danger he’s facing, Ben takes the child with him in his truck and sets out into an environment that is as dangerous as it is beautiful and silent. From that moment forward, nothing will ever be the same.

When conservative law professor Alex Johnson is found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at his house in Chicago, everyone thinks it is suicide. Everyone except his brother, Royce, an FBI agent. Without jurisdiction or leads, Agent Johnson leaves his cases and family to find out who killed his brother. There are many suspects: the ex-wife, an ambitious doctor with expensive tastes and reasons to hate her ex; academic rivals on a faculty divided along political lines; an African-American student who failed the professor’s course. As Agent Johnson peels back layers of mystery in his rogue investigation, the brother he never really knew emerges. Ultimately, he must face the question of how far he is willing to go to catch Alex's killer.

It's 1920, and Louisa Cannon dreams of escaping her life of poverty in London. Louisa's salvation is a position within the Mitford household at Asthall Manor, in the Oxfordshire countryside. There she will become nursemaid, chaperone and confidante to the Mitford sisters, especially 16-year-old Nancy, an acerbic, bright young woman in love with stories. But then a nurse --- Florence Nightingale Shore, goddaughter of her famous namesake --- is killed on a train in broad daylight, and Louisa and Nancy find themselves entangled in the crimes of a murderer who will do anything to hide their secret.

Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn't exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there's a moment of pure magic...and then her bus drives away. Certain they're fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn't find him, not when it matters anyway. Instead they "reunite" at a Christmas party, when her best friend Sarah giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. It's Jack, the man from the bus. What follows for Laurie, Sarah and Jack is 10 years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken and destinies reconsidered.

The beautiful and successful Darcy Fitzwilliam dates hedge funders and basketball stars. She has never fallen in love, never has time for anyone else’s drama, and never goes home for Christmas if she can help it. But when her mother falls ill, she comes home to Pemberley, Ohio, to spend the season with her family. Her parents throw their annual Christmas bash, where she meets Luke Bennet, the smart, sardonic slacker son of their neighbor. When Darcy and Luke fall into bed after too many eggnogs, Darcy thinks it’s just another one-night stand. But why can’t she stop thinking of Luke? Can she fall in love, or will her pride and his prejudice against big-city girls stand in their way?

In THE RELIVE BOX, T.C. Boyle's sharp wit and rich imagination combine with a penetrating social consciousness to produce raucous, poignant and expansive short stories defined by an inimitable voice. From the collection's title story, featuring a Halcom X1520 Relive Box that allows users to experience anew almost any moment from their past, to "The Five-Pound Burrito," the tale of a man aiming to build the biggest burrito in town, the 12 stories in this collection speak to the humor, the pathos and the struggle that is part of being human while relishing the whimsy of wordplay and the power of a story well told.

Male literary friendships are the stuff of legend, but what about the friendships of women writers? A SECRET SISTERHOOD brings to light a wealth of surprising female collaborations: the friendship between Jane Austen and one of the family servants, amateur playwright Anne Sharp; the daring feminist author Mary Taylor, who shaped the work of Charlotte Brontë; the transatlantic friendship of the seemingly aloof George Eliot and the ebullient Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, most often portrayed as bitter foes, but who, in fact, enjoyed a complex friendship. They were sometimes scandalous and volatile, sometimes supportive and inspiring, but always --- until now --- tantalizingly consigned to the shadows.

It’s Christmas, and for the first time in years the entire Birch family will be under one roof. Even Emma and Andrew’s elder daughter will be joining them at Weyfield Hall, their aging country estate. Having just returned from treating an epidemic abroad, Olivia, a doctor, has been told she must stay in quarantine for a week…and so too should her family. For the next seven days, the Birches are locked down, cut off from the rest of humanity and forced into each other’s orbits. In close proximity, not much can stay hidden for long, and as revelations and long-held tensions come to light, nothing is more shocking than the unexpected guest who’s about to arrive.

While at Donnelly’s for his usual pint, Victor Forde is approached by a man in shorts and a pink shirt. He seems to know Victor’s name and to remember him from secondary school. His name is Fitzpatrick. Victor dislikes him on sight, and also dislikes the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of five years being taught by the Christian Brothers. He prompts other memories --- of Rachel, his beautiful wife who became a celebrity, and of Victor’s own small claim to fame, as the man who would say the unsayable on the radio. But it’s the memories of school, and of one particular brother, that Victor cannot control and that eventually threaten to destroy his sanity.

TOWNIES collects, for the first time, Eryk Pruitt's short fiction in a single volume. The title story, "Townies," details what really happened one night, after hours, in a once-popular East Texas sports bar, and the sinister revenge that would soon follow. "Let's Be Awful" tells the story of a cocktail waitress who decides that, after a horrid round of revenge porn, her days of playing the victim have past. In "A Lot Prettier (When You Smile)," we are introduced to a woman who can wrap any man around her finger and decides to put that powerful skill to use one last time.

When Jessica Chamberlain’s phone rings one quiet morning, her world is shattered. As she tries to pick up the pieces and make sense of what went wrong, Jess begins to realize that a tragic death is just the beginning. Soon she is caught in a web of lies and half-truths --- and is horrified to learn that everything leads back to her seven-year-old adopted son, Gabriel. Years ago, Gabe’s birth mother requested a closed adoption and Jessica was more than happy to comply. But when her house is broken into and she discovers a clue that suggests her estranged husband was in close contact with Gabe’s biological mother, she vows to uncover the truth at any cost.