O. Henry, born William Sidney Porter, arrived in New York City fresh from the Ohio Penitentiary, where he had served three-and-a-half years for embezzlement. The American magazine had just reached its pinnacle as an enterprise, and the short story was the most popular medium in entertainment. Porter was in the city to write. From his cell, he already had sold a number of stories to big magazines, and within five years of arriving in Manhattan, he would become the most successful fiction writer in the country. But he never --- never --- said anything about his prison experience, or, indeed, anything about his past life. Anything true, that is. In life as well as on the page, Porter was a yarn-spinner of the highest order. In this twisting tale, Ben Yagoda uses the novelist’s art to get at the truth that lay behind Porter’s reticence, and in doing so, he presents an iridescent portrait of New York at the time.

A virus is spreading across America, transforming the infected and making them feral with lust. Sophie, a good Catholic girl, must traverse the hellscape of the midwest to try to find her family while the world around her burns. Along the way she discovers there are far worse fates than dying a virgin. The end times are coming.

There’s been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead --- under bizarre circumstances --- in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems that the castle has done him in…or, possibly, one of the castle’s guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh, a local with no love for literary Americans, finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists. Why did these authors really come to Castle Kinloch?

Freshly graduated from a rigorous training program in all things spy craft, former typist Evelyne Redfern is eager for her first assignment as a field agent helping Britain win the war. However, when she learns her first task is performing a simple security test at Blackthorn Park, a requisitioned manor house in the sleepy Sussex countryside, she can’t help her initial disappointment. Making matters worse, her handler is to be David Poole, a fellow agent who manages to be both strait-laced and dashing in annoyingly equal measure. However, Evelyne soon realizes that Blackthorn Park is more than meets the eye, and an upcoming visit from Winston Churchill means that security at the secret weapons research and development facility is of the utmost importance. When Evelyne discovers Blackthorn Park’s chief engineer dead in his office, her simple assignment becomes more complicated.

In a quiet suburban neighborhood in upstate New York, single mom Kelly Gibson is slain in her home --- the victim of a rage killing. Right away, Sheriff Bree Taggert has three persons of interest: an angry soon-to-be ex-husband, a furtive rebound boyfriend, and an obsessive neighbor. But as Bree and investigator Matt Flynn work together to narrow the field, there’s a shocking twist in the case: a second woman is murdered in the same brutal fashion. While investigating, Bree is attacked and left for dead. When another woman is kidnapped, Bree and Matt must act quickly to unravel the deceptions in Kelly’s life and death and find a killer before someone else dies.

Agrigento, Sicily, 1883. With the orsine destroyed, Cairndale lies in ruins, and Marlowe has vanished. His only hope of rescue lies in a fabled second orsine --- long-hidden, thought lost --- which might not even exist. But when a body is discovered in the shadow of Cairndale, a body wreathed in the corrupted dust of the drughr, Charlie and the Talents realize there is even more at stake than they'd feared. For a new drughr has arisen, ferocious, horned, seemingly able to move in their world at will --- and it is not alone. A malevolent figure, known only as the Abbess, desires the dust for her own ends. And deep in the world of the dead, a terrible evil stirs --- an evil that the corrupted dust just might hold the secret to reviving or destroying forever.

Peyton Collard was a good man once, but his life changed after a horrific car accident. Divorced, drunk and severely damaged, Peyton is offered a life-changing sum of money to kill an evil man. But as he goes on a vigilante journey that leaves a trail of bodies across California, Peyton wonders about the identity of his anonymous patron. Soon, his questions become an obsession, and he embarks on a tense and potentially deadly investigation to discover the truth about the murders he’s committed.

In this brilliantly conceived novel, Will Self turns his forensic eye and technicolor imagination to the troubled life of his mother, Elaine. Standing by the mailbox outside 1100 Hemlock Street in Ithaca, New York, Elaine thinks of her husband and child inside her house and wonders: Is this…it? As she begins to push back against the strictures of her life in 1950s America, she undertakes a disastrous affair that places her marriage to an Ivy League academic and former Communist Party member in peril. Based on the intimate diaries that Self’s mother kept for over 40 years, ELAINE is a writer’s attempt to reach the almost unimaginable realm: a parent’s interior life prior to his own existence.

Brooke wants. She isn’t in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals. It may inspire new desires as well: proximity to wealth turns out to be nothing less than transformative. What is money, really, but a kind of belief?

To the other priestesses of the Nine, a powerful council at the Lady’s Temple, Morgana is haughty and arrogant as she performs feats of magic no human should be capable of. Rumors start that she must be a fearsome fae. To King Arthur, Morgana is a trusted and devoted advisor, but his court is wary of her and her prodigious talent at divination. But his wife sees Morgana as a rival and a malevolent witch. To Braithe, Morgana’s faithful acolyte, she is simply the most powerful priestess Camelot has seen. Morgana doesn’t know why she’s so different from everyone else, and she doesn’t much care. But when she aids Arthur to ascend the throne before his time, she sets off a series of events that will change everything Morgana believes about her power.

Author Kara Parsons is at a book signing in the town where she was raised. Before it’s over, a young girl approaches with a copy of Kara’s book containing a handwritten inscription: I am a missing child. Most people would alert the police, but Kara knows what happens to the young and vulnerable when the system fails them. She turns to her former therapist, Arles Shepherd, who finds something off about this girl who refuses to reveal her own name. What is she running from? And how much of what she says can be believed? When a man with a gun manages to locate Arles’ remote wilderness home, the true threat is revealed, and Arles and Kara go on the run. But to save this child, Arles must allow her to be found. And that’s when the real danger begins.

Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the founder, owner and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling Victorian house in the White Mountains dedicated to the Master of Suspense. There, Alfred offers his guests round-the-clock film screenings, movie props and memorabilia in every room, plus an aviary with 50 crows. To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in 16 years, not after what happened. But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it. After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body.

In Washington, DC, the president-elect is tapping the country’s brightest legal minds as candidates for the Supreme Court. Then one of them is gunned down. Another is stabbed. A third is murdered near midnight on a city street. Now it’s up to Detective Alex Cross, the FBI’s top expert in criminal behavior, to go inside the mind of a diabolical killer and protect the country’s best hope for justice. 

“No subject possesses the minds of men like religious bigotry and hate, and these fires are being lighted today in America.” So said legendary attorney Clarence Darrow as hundreds of people descended on the sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, for the trial of a schoolteacher named John T. Scopes, who was charged with breaking the law by teaching evolution to his biology class in a public school. In KEEPING THE FAITH, Brenda Wineapple explores how and why the Scopes trial quickly seemed a circus-like media sensation, drawing massive crowds and worldwide attention. She takes us into the early years of the 20th century --- years of racism, intolerance and world war --- to illuminate, through this pivotal legal showdown, a seismic period in American history.

In 1937, clouds of war gather over Europe, and American fascists march at home. While the FBI chases suspected communists, Nazi agents plot an armed insurrection. When the world's two most famous men --- Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin --- uncover the scheme, which includes the assassinations of Hollywood's biggest stars, they fight back with nothing but their ingenuity, raw courage, and the fierce resolve of Georgia Ann Robinson, the LAPD's first Black female officer. A dangerous chase takes our heroes into the heart of darkness, a fascist encampment in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles where a militia armed with machine guns plans its attack. It's brains versus brawn in an explosive, unforgettable finale.

Barcelona 1936. Theo Sterling helps the Anarchist workers defeat the army that is trying to overthrow the democratically elected government, and he is reunited with his true love, Maria. But all too soon, his joy turns to terror as the Anarchists turn on him, led by a rival for Maria’s affection. Lucky to escape with his life, Theo returns to England to study at Oxford. But his heart is in Spain, now torn apart by a bloody civil war, and he is quick to abandon his new life when his old schoolmate, Esmond, offers him the chance to fight the Fascists. He is unprepared for the nightmare of war that crushes his spirit and his hope until, back in Barcelona, Theo is confronted with a final terrible choice that will define his life forever.

When 13-year-old Jolie Aspern drops her phone onto the subway tracks in 2011, her estranged dad, Ethan, seems like the furthest thing from her mind. A convicted felon and recovering addict, Ethan has long struggled to see beyond himself. But then a call from New York makes him fear that his daughter is in deeper trouble than anyone realizes. And believing he’s the only one who can save her, he decides to return home. So begins the journey that, in time, will push Jolie and Ethan --- child and adult, apart and together, different yet the same --- out past their depths.

One day, all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from his 19-year-old daughter, Sidney, who was left behind by her white mother and stepfamily. Traumatized by the event and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search of answers. But neither of them are prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.