It’s Christmas time in Millers Kill, and Reverend Clare Fergusson and her husband, Russ van Alstyne --- newly resigned from his position as chief of police --- plan to enjoy it with their baby boy. But when a beloved holiday parade is crashed by white supremacists, Clare and Russ find themselves sucked into a parallel world of militias, machinations and murder. They and three others --- single mom and officer Hadley Knox; novice lawyer Joy Zhào; and NYS Forest Ranger Paul Terrance --- will discover that their suspicions hang on a single twisting thread, leading to the forbidding High Peaks of the Adirondacks. As the December days shorten and the nights grow long, a disparate group of would-be heroes need to unwind a murderous plot before time runs out.

As the snowstorm of the century bears down on New England, reclusive author Mabel Miller is preparing to spend yet another Christmas alone with her cats. That is, until the weather intervenes and sends not one but two cars spinning into the stone wall surrounding her isolated cottage. Now she has a house full of strangers when the last thing she wanted was company for Christmas. Yet Mabel’s unexpected guests --- a family with two young children expecting Santa to drop gifts down the chimney, and two work colleagues who clearly have a history --- are determined to make the best of the situation. As her attempts to protect her privacy are thwarted by the two little ones, soon Mabel is allowing them into her library, a place that contains so many of her secrets.

On a frigid, windswept day in Scotland’s Western Hebrides, Eleanor Bruton’s body is discovered on the shore. Little did Eleanor’s family know that she was harboring a dark and all-consuming secret --- a scrap of fraying embroidery that seems worthless at first glance. For over a century, two rival organizations of women have gone to deadly lengths to secure the valuable artifact in the hopes of finding the original medieval manuscript from which it was torn. When Dr. Anya Brown garners international attention for her translation of the cryptic Folio 9, she is handpicked by Diana Cornish, a professor and high-ranking member of the Fellowship, to join the exclusive Institute of Manuscript Studies in St. Andrews. Unbeknownst to Anya, she’s been recruited at great personal danger to translate ancient texts that the Fellowship believes critical to their mission.

When Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the day they bury her cousin, Monife, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief, fanned by the entire family, that Eniiyi is the actual reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps. There is also the matter of the family curse --- “No man will call your house home. And if they try, they will not have peace...” --- which has broken numerous hearts and caused three generations of abandoned Falodun women to live under the same roof. When Eniiyi falls in love, she no longer can run from her family’s history. Is she destined to live out her family's story of love and heartache? Or can she break the pattern?

In DEAD AND ALIVE, Zadie Smith brings her unique skills as an essayist to bear on a range of subjects that have captured her attention in recent years. She takes an exhilaratingly close look at artists Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kara Walker and Celia Paul. She invites us along to the movies, to see and to think about Tár, and to New York to reflect on the spontaneous moments that connect us. She takes us on a walk down Kilburn High Road in her beloved North West London and welcomes us to mourn with her the passing of writers Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison. She considers changes of government on both sides of the Atlantic --- and the meaning of "the commons" in all our lives.

Milton Muleborn has envied Matthew Echota, a talented Cherokee artist, ever since they were locked up together in a dangerous juvenile detention center in the late 1980s. Until Matthew escaped, that is. A novel within a novel, we read here Milton’s dark, sometimes comic and possibly unreliable account of the story of their childhood even as, years later, he remains jealous of Matthew’s extraordinary abilities and unlikely success. Milton reveals secrets about their friendship, their families, and their nightmarish, surreal experience of imprisonment. In revisiting the past, he explores the echoing traumas of incarceration and pride.

Graduating magna cum laude from MIT is the happiest day of Billie Banks’ life, although her family is not part of it. Her mother, who always supported her, died when Billie was 17. Since then, her father has been slowly drinking himself to death on the family farm in Iowa, and she and her younger sister, Mickie, have grown even more estranged. Despite Billie’s attempts to look after Mickie following their mother’s death, her sister consistently treated her with cruelty. So when Mickie invites Billie to move in with her in Los Angeles, Billie is both wary and hopeful. Taking a leap of faith, she joins her sister on the West Coast. While Mickie lands a questionable modeling job and falls in with a fast crowd, Billie begins working at a pathology lab and starts dating a warm, supportive reporter at the Los Angeles Times. But then the siblings’ difficult history once again rises to the surface.

Marley Maples is sure she's finally evaded her vampire mortal enemy. Halsten has stalked her across oceans of time and many, many lives. But now she's arrived at the age of 30 in Hollow Brook with no sign of him. So she’s devastated when he suddenly shows and yet again tries to make her life hell. Until her two witchy best friends suggest a spell to make him forget all about her. There’s just one issue: he forgets his whole existence with it. And all he sees when he looks at Marley is his beloved little witch, his savior, the light of his life. He goes from being a horror that haunts her nightmares to a man who loves her and will protect her at all costs. And as much as she’s skeptical, she can’t help finding his fish-out-of-water, warrior ways and his desire to defend her endearing.

It’s hunting season in the foothills of Virginia, and “Sister” Jane Arnold is content to spend it alongside her friends, particularly one Olivia Bradford. Olivia is a formidable figure in town --- not least because she keeps the peace between her sons, Winston and Andrew --- but when she passes away, the brothers return to their squabbling ways. Faced with contention over their inheritance, tensions escalate, and the two get into a fierce fight --- and soon after, one of them turns up dead. All eyes turn to the surviving brother. But Sister can’t fathom that he’s capable of murder, and soon suspects begin to reveal themselves left and right. The more she learns, the more Sister begins to doubt the people she’s hunted with for decades.

At a frozen lakeside crime scene, a corpse carries an accusatory note: “If anything happens to me, arrest Brendan Holmes.” Mysteries trail Brendan Holmes, Margaret Marple and Auguste Poe wherever they go. At a remote lodge in upstate New York, the embattled private investigators have taken refuge from the assailant who bombed their sleek city headquarters. When the discovery of a body in the lake puts the detectives back in the headlines and under suspicion, the elusive killer issues his despicable orders: stop solving crimes --- and start committing them.

On the eve of the American Revolution, half a million enslaved African Americans were embedded in the North American population. The slave trade was flourishing, even as the 13 colonies armed themselves to defend against the idea of being governed without consent. This paradox gave birth to what Joseph J. Ellis calls the “great contradiction”: How could a government that had been justified and founded on the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence institutionalize slavery? How could it permit a tidal wave of western migration by settlers who understood the phrase “pursuit of happiness” to mean the pursuit of Indian lands? In THE GREAT CONTRADICTION, Ellis addresses the questions that lie at America’s twisted roots.

In the frying pan of a drought-scorched 1890s Southwest, an old man shows up at the region’s only prosperous spread, the Callahan ranch, seeking work. Jack is flinty, shrewd, tough, and a natural with a gun. As an incentive to be taken on at his age, he shows the foreman an uncanny skill with one of Mr. Winchester’s latest models. He knows a sharpshooter would be valuable to Colonel Callahan and head gunman Tom Voth. But he has his own mission. Aware that a young cowboy on the ranch has died mysteriously, Jack begins to investigate. He soon realizes that the death and the source of the Callahan wealth are dangerously entwined and that many of the dark forces of the American West are at play on the ranch. Soon enough, it’s the season of the six-gun and its fastest shootist.

Abe Winter and Ruth Warneke were never meant to be together --- at least if you ask Ruth. Yet their catastrophic blind date in college evolved into a 70-year marriage and a life on a farm on Bainbridge Island with their hens and beloved Labrador, Megs. Through the years, the Winters have fallen in and out of lockstep, and from their haunting losses and guarded secrets, a dependable partnership has been forged. But when Ruth’s loose tooth turns out to be something much more malicious, the beautiful, reliable life they’ve created together comes to a crisis. As Ruth struggles with her crumbling independence, Abe must learn how to take care of her while their three living children question his ability to look after his wife. And once again, the couple has to reconfigure how to be there for each other.

JOYRIDE is a magic carpet ride through Susan Orlean’s life and career, where every day is an opportunity for discovery and every moment holds the potential for wonder. Throughout her storied career, Orlean’s curiosity draws her to explore the most ordinary and extraordinary of places, from going deep inside the head of a regular 10-year-old boy for a legendary profile (“The American Man Age Ten”) to reporting on a woman who owns 27 tigers, from capturing the routine magic of Saturday night to climbing Mt. Fuji. Orlean takes us through her process of dreaming up ideas, managing deadlines, connecting with sources, chasing every possible lead, confronting writer’s block and self-doubt, and crafting the perfect lede --- a Susan specialty.

During a séance in 1924, Harry Houdini --- the greatest entertainer in the world --- was cursed by a vengeful spirit, who said his days were numbered. Houdini laughed. He believed talking to the dead was impossible. By 1926, Houdini was dead. This is the untold story of the last performance of Harry Houdini, who --- inspired by his hero, Abraham Lincoln --- devotes himself full-time to a personal crusade against Spiritualism, the practice of speaking to the dead. In a spellbinding journey across Jazz Age America, haunted by the aftermath of the Great War and a deadly pandemic, Houdini encounters modern-day haunted houses, warlocks and monsters, and uncovers a shocking conspiracy that stretches all the way to the American presidency --- and to the House of Houdini itself.

Three newlywed couples have disappeared from an exclusive resort in Florida, only to turn up dead soon after. It’s up to the FBI Mobile Response Team to catch a serial killer before anyone else ends up dead. And they have the perfect bait --- Detective Kara Quinn, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the targeted women. Undercover as newlyweds pretending to enjoy their honeymoon, Kara and FBI Agent Matt Costa set a flawless trap. When their plan works and they arrest the predator, Matt sends the rest of the team home. But on Monday morning, the couple doesn’t show up to work, and the MRT learns they never checked out of their hotel. As their team tries to find them, Matt and Kara learn the truth --- the killer wasn’t acting alone. He had a partner who succeeded where he failed. Kidnapped and forced into a twisted escape room, they need to find a way out.

Abe Jacobs is Kanien’kehá:ka from Ahkwesáhsne --- or, as white people say, a Mohawk Indian from the Saint Regis Tribe. At 18, Abe left the reservation where he was raised and never looked back. Now at 43, he is suffering from a rare disease --- one his doctors in Miami believe will kill him. Running from his diagnosis and a marriage teetering on collapse, Abe returns to the Rez, where he’s persuaded to undergo a healing at the hands of his Great Uncle Budge. But Budge --- a wry, recovered alcoholic prone to wearing punk T-shirts --- isn’t all that convincing. And Abe’s time off the Rez has made him a thorough skeptic. To heal, Abe will undertake a revelatory journey, confronting the parts of himself he’s hidden ever since he left home and wrestling with the imprint left by his once-passionate marriage.

A $100 million painting. A previously unknown Picasso is discovered in the attic of a French villa. Everyone wants to possess it. Only one person knows how to take it. THE PICASSO HEIST is a thriller that scales astonishing heights when a newcomer to the Manhattan art world executes a grand theft.

June 2011: The case has been cold for nearly 10 years when a terrorist fleeing the Arab Spring turns himself in and confesses to killing American soldiers in Afghanistan. This brazen act sets off an unlikely chain of events that puts the entirety of the American justice system to the test. They have the killer but no evidence to prove the murders happened. Determined to deliver justice, a team led by federal prosecutors Dave Bitkower and Shreve Ariail must traverse the globe, uncovering facts across thousands of miles and tracing shocking plots of terror in order to prevent tragedy from striking again. RACE AGAINST TERROR shows a man radicalized to enact violence, courageous soldiers who risked their lives for each other, and the diverse set of men and women who work tirelessly to stay one step ahead of disaster.

In August 2020, a group of nurses are working in the ICU at a hospital in San Bernardino at the height of a COVID surge: Larette Embers, whose husband, Grief, is an animal control officer; Cherrise Martinez, whose husband died years ago in a car crash, and whose daughter, Raquel, has been sent to a Coachella date farm to live with her great-aunt to avoid the virus; and Marisol Manalang, born in the Philippines but based in Sacramento. As the nurses struggle with the skyrocketing number of sick patients, Cherisse's daughter goes missing. Grief's friend Johnny Frias, a California Highway Patrol officer, joins the search to find her. The resulting journey leads to new love and loss, pushing all our characters to their breaking points.

Army CID Special Agents Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor team up for their toughest assignment yet as they are dispatched to Camp Hayden to investigate the death of Major Roger Ames, the chief scientist in charge of the top-secret war games being conducted between a platoon of Army Rangers and a fleet of “lethal autonomous weapons.” Brodie and Taylor must untangle the complex web of alliances, animosities and secret agendas among the men and women of the isolated facility. In a place cut off from the world and exposed to the harsh desert elements, everyone is a suspect. Brodie and Taylor must uncover layers of deception to find the hidden hand behind the murder of Major Ames, and the real purpose of the activities at Camp Hayden and its terrifying arsenal of next-generation weapons.

Thirty-four-year-old writer Audrey Beacon is grieving alone during lockdown when a post about a bookshop for sale in upstate New York pops into her social media feed like a lifeline. Audrey impulsively cashes out her savings, loads her possessions into her dead husband’s van, and flees Manhattan for the village of Schuywich. While reviving the shop, Audrey discovers letters from the 1950s between the previous owner, magazine writer Evelyn Cabot, and a local librarian, Hazel McIntyre. It was love at first sight when the pair met at a summer camp in Maine that discreetly promises a “different vacation for professional women.” But the letters abruptly end in 2015 when they're forced to abandon the bookshop. Will Audrey find the courage to heal the wounds of the past --- including her own?