Agnes, Charlie, Marshall and the other elderly residents of Sunset Hall are going stir-crazy at home. And to top it all off, another series of murders is rocking the hamlet of Duck End. So when Edwina manages to slip onto Marshall’s computer in an unobserved moment and promptly wins a stay in an exclusive coastal hotel in Cornwall, the Sunset Hall crew waste no time in joining her. But Agnes sees something unsettling from the terrace of the hotel: two figures in hoods walk away from the hotel along the cliffs, but only one returns. Worried she’s witnessed a murder, Agnes tells the others. At first nobody really believes her. But when the hotel ends up isolated from the outside world after a storm, it becomes clear that a murderer really is on the loose --- and they’re trapped, just like all of the other guests.

April 1999. The body of Alaska Sanders is found on the shore of a lake near the quiet town of Mount Pleasant, New Hampshire. The young woman’s death rocks the small community, but the murder is quickly solved. Within days, a suspect is identified and soon convicted. Case closed. Or so it seemed. Eleven years later, Marcus Goldman, celebrity author and amateur sleuth, picks up a thread that will unravel not only the “open and shut” case of Alaska Sanders, but the very fabric of his best friend’s life. Sergeant Perry Gahalowood, who led the original Alaska Sanders investigation, is hell-bent on finding the truth and setting the record straight. Teaming up with Marcus, he hopes to find redemption by solving the most intricate and trying case of his career.

The campaign of destruction that Axel Soledad and Dallas Cates wreaked on Nate Romanowski and Joe Pickett left both men in tatters, especially Nate, who lost almost everything. Wondering if the civilized life left him vulnerable to attack, Nate dropped off the grid with his falcons in tow to prepare for vengeance. When Joe gets a call from the governor asking for help finding his son-in-law, who has gone missing in the Sierra Madre mountain range, he enlists the help of a local, a rookie game warden named Susan Kany. As Nate and fellow falconer Geronimo Jones circle closer to their prey, Joe and Susan follow the nearly cold trail to Warm Springs. Little do Nate and Joe know that their separate journeys are about to converge…at Battle Mountain.

Ramón López was born along the US-Mexico border but is determined to get out and embrace the American dream --- and he's not sure whether his complicated family is a help or a hindrance. As the son of immigrants, as Ramón grows, his admiration for his entrepreneurial father sours as he watches his dad's dreams of success wither on the vine. Ramón's mother is constantly preoccupied with his younger brother, who struggles with intellectual disabilities. And the outside world is rife with danger and temptations threatening to distract Ramón from his dreams of making it to New York and succeeding as an artist. As dreams clash with reality and values conflict with desires, Ramón finds the American dream within his reach. But will it demand too big a sacrifice?

Hannah has been running from her demons ever since she emerged from a harrowing wilderness trip without her fiancé. No one knows exactly what happened the day Ben died, and Hannah would like to keep it that way...even if his ghost still haunts her with vivid waking nightmares that are ruining her life. So when her friend group gets an exclusive invitation to a restorative spiritual retreat in Joshua Tree, Hannah reluctantly agrees in search of a fresh start. Despite her skepticism of the strange Guru Pax and his belief in the supernatural world, Hannah soon finds healing through all the yoga, sound baths and hot springs offered at the tech-free haven. But this peaceful journey of self-discovery quickly descends into a violent fight for self-preservation when a mysterious killer starts picking off retreat attendees in increasingly gruesome ways.

When Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala investigate a mass stranding of aquatic life in the Indian Ocean, they accidentally uncover a much deeper mystery. A strange figure soon steals NUMA’s findings, forcing a high-speed chase. Someone really didn’t want them examining those dead whales. A cryptic text through the NUMA satellite network makes things still stranger. These odd phrases and numbers look like NUMA codes. But who could be tantalizing the crew with such specific knowledge of their tech? Are they being helped by an old friend, or lured into a trap by a traitor who knows a little too much about NUMA’s inner workings? Kurt, Joe and even Max, the agency’s supercomputer, will have to investigate like never before as they decrypt data, infiltrate a cult of cloned men, and prepare for a battle on two very different planes: one physical, one digital.

In the leafy, charming town of Chapelwick, the Bittersweet family has been a fixture on High Street for as long as anyone can remember. Their rambling black-and-white building houses all three generations of ghost-sensitive Bittersweet women and their business, Blithe Spirits. On her 27th birthday, Melody Bittersweet converts the disused back storeroom into her office and opens her own business. Right away, the freshly minted Girls’ Ghostbusting Agency takes on its first case: a grand old house that won’t sell because a trio of incumbent ghost brothers raise merry hell whenever prospective owners arrive to view it. Leo Dark, Melody’s rakish ex and business rival, is also on the case, along with the TV crew that trails him. To make matters worse, the sarcastic and skeptical (and annoyingly good-looking) local reporter Fletcher Gunn has his nose in the story as well.

1983: At a former sanatorium in the north of Iceland that is now a hospital ward, an old nurse, Yrsa, is found murdered. Detective Hulda Hermannsdottir and her boss, Sverrir, are sent to investigate her death. There, they discover five suspects. Less than a week after the murder, the chief physician is also found dead, having apparently fallen from a balcony. Sverrir rules his death a suicide and assumes that he was guilty of the murder as well. The case is closed. 2012: Almost 30 years later, Helgi Reykdal, a young police officer, is writing his thesis on the 1983 murders in the north. As Helgi delves deeper into the past, he decides to try to meet with the original suspects. But soon he finds silence and suspicion at every turn as he tries to finally solve the mystery from years before.

Thirty-five-year-old Seattleite Sadie Wells is desperate to escape her monotonous routines, the family business that has consumed her entire life, and the unexpected gay panic that has her questioning everything she thought she knew about herself. So when her injured sister offers Sadie her place on a tour along Portugal’s Camino de Santiago, she decides this is the perfect chance to get away from it all. After three glasses of wine on the plane and some turbulence convince Sadie she won’t even survive the flight, she confesses all her secrets to her seatmate, Mal. The problem: the plane doesn’t crash, and it turns out Mal is on her Camino tour. Worst of all, Sadie learns that she is on a tour specifically for queer women, and that her 200-mile trek will be a journey of self-discovery, whether she wants it to be or not.

Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a fire that took his mother’s life. Every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes of Europe in the grip of the Cold War. When he is offered the chance to interview Patrice Lumumba, the newly elected president of the People’s Republic of the Congo, he finds himself drawn into a web of duplicities and betrayals. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthlessly efficient MI6 handler, he becomes “her spy,” unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, there also will be revelations closer to home that may change his own story and the fates of those around him.

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves when he is visited by someone who always has been bent on tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn’t missing at all). Darren must decide if he can trust that his mother is telling the truth --- and what her ulterior motive may be. He gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera’s family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he’ll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again --- his mother.

As the true horrors of the Third Reich began to be exposed immediately after World War II, the Nazi war criminals who committed genocide went on the run. A few were swiftly caught, including the notorious SS leader Heinrich Himmler. Others, however, evaded capture through a sophisticated Nazi organization designed to hide them. KILLING THE SS is the epic saga of the espionage and daring waged by self-styled "Nazi hunters." Over decades, these men and women scoured the world, tracking down the SS fugitives and bringing them to justice, which often meant death.

When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she ever could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.

Jane Pyre was once half of the famous rock ‘n’ roll duo, the Lightning Bottles. Years later, she’s perhaps the most hated --- and least understood --- woman in music. She was never as popular with fans as her bandmate (and soulmate), Elijah Hart --- even if Jane was the one who wrote the songs that catapulted the Lightning Bottles to instant, dizzying fame. But ever since Elijah disappeared five years earlier and the band’s meteoric rise to fame came crashing down, the public hatred of Jane has taken on new levels. What she doesn’t anticipate is the bombshell that awaits her at her new home in the German countryside: the sullen teenage girl next door --- a Lightning Bottles superfan --- who claims to have proof that not only is Elijah still alive, he’s been leaving secret messages for Jane. And they need to find them right away.

When a tragic accident separates three dogs from their human, they find themselves up for adoption --- separately. But Riggs, a dedicated, loyal Australian Shepherd, refuses to see his family torn apart. After the exuberant and fun-loving doodle Archie and quick-witted Jack Russell Luna are taken to new homes, Riggs' powerful herding instincts send him on a journey to bring his pack back together again.

Ford and Neuland are paranormal mercenaries --- one living, one undead; one of them kills the undead, the other kills the living. When a job goes bad in New York, they head west to wait for the heat to cool down. There, a young woman named Tilda Rosenbloom hires them on behalf of wealthy landowner Shepherd Mansfield to track and kill a demon haunting a mansion in remote northern California. As Ford and Neuland investigate the creature, they uncover a legacy of blood, sacrifice and slavery in the house. Forced to confront a powerful creature unlike anything they’ve faced before, they come to learn that the most frightening monster might not be the one they're hunting.

Theodore “Teddy” Hartigan is the scion of a wealthy Washington, D.C. family who place him into a comfortable job at the State Department and a placid diplomat’s career. In 1938, as Hitler’s inexorable rise continues, Teddy is reassigned to the US Consulate in Amsterdam to replace fleeing staff. Teddy’s job is to process visa applications, and by 1939, refugees from Nazi-conquered Poland, Austria and other countries are desperate to secure safe passage to America. When Teddy and his girlfriend, Sara, are introduced to an orphaned young girl named Katy, who has been abandoned on the grounds of a nursery school, they agree to adopt her. Teddy makes the dangerous and selfless decision to join with underground groups and use his position at the Consulate to rescue those with no other avenue of escape.

Two years ago, Hayley Stone lost everything. First, her parents died in a devastating fire. Then, her sister overdosed, leaving Hayley alone and hounded by a media circus that turned her family’s tragedy into tabloid fodder. When her new husband suggests a fresh start in the Adirondacks, the promise of anonymity in an isolated mountain town feels like salvation. But the mountains hold darker secrets than she ever imagined. Her once-loving husband grows distant and volatile. The widow down the road keeps spewing vague accusations. Not even their new friends can help her shake the creeping sense that something is off. As winter edges closer, Hayley discovers that her sanctuary is anything but safe. In trying to escape her past, she may have run straight into something far more dangerous.

On a sunny morning in June, Margaret Carpenter wakes up to find a new iPhone on her doorstep. She switches it on to find a text from her best friend, Charity Atwater. The problem is, Charity has been missing for over a month. Most people in town --- even the police --- think she’s dead. Margaret and Charity have been lifelong friends. They share everything and know the most intimate details about one another. Except for the destructive secret hidden from them both. A secret that will trigger a chain of events ending in tragedy, bloodshed and death. And now Charity wants Margaret to know her story --- the real story. In a narrative that takes place over one feverish day, Margaret follows a series of increasingly disquieting breadcrumbs as she forges deeper into the mystery of her best friend --- a person she never truly knew at all.

First glimpsed riding on the back of a boy’s motorcycle, 14-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines her upbringing in a small Polish village before her world imploded in late 1942. Stripped of her modest belongings, shorn, and tattooed number 26947 on arriving at Auschwitz, Czeslawa is then photographed. Three months later, she is dead. How did this happen to an ordinary Polish citizen? This is the question that Tuck grapples with in THE REST IS MEMORY, which frames Czeslawa’s story within the epic tragedy of six million Poles who perished during the German occupation.

The kingdom of Cansere is on the brink of war. Young men are conscripted from their homes, and a royal decree from the queen has made healing the only legal form of craftlock. Nym, a healer and beekeeper, is the sole provider for her family of seven now that her younger brother has been sent to the war front. But when a letter comes from the queen, summoning her to the palace to heal Prince Renn, the kingdom’s ailing shut-in, Nym finds herself making the tumultuous journey from her family’s apiary to the capital city. Forced to become the prince’s official healer and a ward of the castle, and with her only hope of returning to her family hinging on the prince’s recovery, Nym must navigate the castle’s cruel and twisted court and uncover the haunting truth behind Prince Renn’s illness --- even as she finds herself irrevocably drawn to him.

It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof and the empirical world. None of that explains what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life. As Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place --- first in academics, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships --- every step brings collisions with Ollie, who slips in and out of the Shred family without warning. Yet for all that threatens their sibling bond, Amy and Ollie cannot escape or deny the inextricable sister knot that binds them.

A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American health care system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value --- art, memory, poetry, music, care --- are thrown into sharp relief. Time expands and contracts. Sudden intimacies bloom. SMALL RAIN surges beyond the hospital to encompass a radiant vision of human life: our shared vulnerability, the limits and possibilities of sympathy, the ideal of art and the fragile dream of America. Above all, this is a love story of the most unexpected kind.

Twenty-eight-year-old Kiki Banjo hosts the popular podcast “The HeartBeat,” solving romantic conundrums and dishing out life advice. Behind the scenes, though, career setbacks and a devastating breakup have left her hanging on by a thread. As she’s preparing to be the Maid of Honor in her best friend’s wedding, everything starts to unravel, and Kiki is left wondering if she ever had the answers. Then Kiki finds herself face-to-face with the Best Man, her ex-boyfriend, Malakai. While Kiki is approaching rock bottom, Malakai has been on the rise as a filmmaker. Both are hell-bent on ignoring the smoldering chemistry between them, but they can’t ignore the spark that’s only getting hotter. They just have to get through the summer. So why does it feel like they're playing with fire?

Iranian-American multimillionaires Ali and Homa Milani have it all --- a McMansion in the hills of Los Angeles, a microwaveable snack empire and four spirited daughters. There’s Violet, the big-hearted aspiring model; Roxanna, the chaotic influencer; Mina, the chronically online overachiever; and the impressionable health fanatic Haylee. On the verge of landing their own reality TV show, the Milanis realize their deepest secrets are about to be dragged out into the open before the cameras even roll. Each of the Milanis --- even their aloof Persian cat, Pari --- has something to hide, but the looming scrutiny of fame also threatens to bring the family closer than ever.

Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather gray. Worse still, her mother’s family is cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin, Liv. Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family. She becomes fiercely protective of her little cousin, and her warmth and kindness give Funke a place to heal. The two girls grow into adulthood the closest of friends, but the choices their mothers made haunt them. And when a second tragedy occurs, their friendship is torn apart. Against the long shadow of their shared family history, each woman will struggle to chart a path forward, separated by country, misunderstanding and ambition.

Despite the odds, Calla Tuoleimi has won San-Er’s bloody games and eliminated King Kasa, her tyrant uncle and the former ruler of Talin. She now serves as royal advisor to Kasa’s adopted son, August Shenzhi, who has risen to the throne. Only Calla knows it isn’t really August. Anton Makusa is still furious about Calla’s betrayal in the final round of the games. In an impossible feat, he took over August’s body to survive and has no intention of giving up this newfound power. But when his first love, the beautiful, explosive Otta Avia, awakens from a years-long coma and reveals a secret that threatens the monarchy’s authority over Talin, chaos erupts. As tensions come to a boiling point, Calla and Anton must set aside their conflicts and head to the kingdom’s far reaches to prevent anarchy...even if their empire might be better off burning.

Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in WE’RE ALONE include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood and the complexities of resilience. From hurricanes to political violence, from her days as a new student at a Brooklyn elementary school knowing little English to her account of a shooting hoax at a Miami mall, Danticat has an extraordinary ability to move from the personal to the global and back again. Throughout, literature and art prove to be her reliable companions and guides in both tragedies and triumphs.

Henry is a brilliant engineer who, after untold hours spent in his home lab, has achieved the breakthrough of his career. He’s created an artificially intelligent consciousness. He calls the half-formed robot William. No one knows about William. Henry’s agoraphobia keeps him inside the house, and his fixation on his project keeps him up in the attic, away from everyone, including his pregnant wife, Lily. When Lily’s coworkers show up, wanting to finally meet Henry and see the new house --- the smartest of smart homes --- Henry decides to introduce them to William, and things go from strange to much worse. Soon Henry and Lily discover that the security upgrades intended to keep danger out of the house are even better at locking it in.

“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to his new collection of 12 stories (many never-before-published) that delve into the darker part of life --- both metaphorical and literal. For half a century, King has been a master of the form, and these stories --- about fate, mortality, luck and the folds in reality where anything can happen --- are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,” and in YOU LIKE IT DARKER, readers also will feel that exhilaration, again and again.