The American Revolution is often portrayed as a high-minded, orderly event whose capstone, the Constitution, provided the ideal framework for a democratic, prosperous nation. In AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS, Alan Taylor gives us a different creation story. Rising out of the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies, Taylor’s Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britain’s mainland colonies. Conflict ignited on the frontier, where settlers clamored to push west into Indian lands against British restrictions, and in the seaboard cities, where commercial elites mobilized riots and boycotts to resist British tax policies.

In a quiet Pennsylvania town, a thousand dead starlings fall onto a high school baseball field, unleashing a horrifying and unexpected chain of events that will rock the close-knit community. Beloved baseball coach and teacher Nate Winters and his wife, Alicia, are well-respected throughout town. That is, until one of the many reporters investigating the bizarre bird phenomenon catches Nate embracing a wayward student, Lucia Hamm, in front of a sleazy motel. Lucia claims that she and Nate are engaged in an affair, and when she suddenly disappears, the police only have one suspect: Nate. Nate’s coworker and sole supporter, Bridget Harris, is determined to prove his innocence.

Forsyth County, Georgia, at the turn of the 20th century was home to a large African American community. Many black residents were poor sharecroppers, but others owned their own farms. But then in September 1912, three young black laborers were accused of raping and murdering a white girl. One man was dragged from a jail cell and lynched on the town square, two teenagers were hung after a one-day trial, and soon bands of white “night riders” launched a coordinated campaign of arson and terror. National Book Award finalist Patrick Phillips tells Forsyth’s tragic story in vivid detail and traces its long history of racial violence all the way back to antebellum Georgia.

The holidays have arrived, and Hannah and her good pal Lisa have agreed to provide all the goodies for the town’s annual production of “A Christmas Carol.” But before anyone can say “Bah, humbug!” a Santa-sized sackful of trouble ensues. Like the fact that Lisa’s husband will be playing Mr. Claus to his ex-girlfriend Phyllis Bates’ Mrs. Claus. Or that Phyllis is found dead in the snow, wearing a costume that the real Mrs. Claus would put on the naughty list. Soon after, the suspects pile up faster than snowdrifts in a blizzard, while a merry murderer remains on the loose. With clues even harder to find, it might take a visit from ghosts of Christmas past to wrap up this mystery in time for the holidays.

After 30 years at St. Oswald’s Grammar in North Yorkshire, England, Latin master Roy Straitley has seen all kinds of boys come and go. But every so often there’s a boy who doesn’t quite fit the mold. A troublemaker. A boy with darkness inside. With insolvency and academic failure looming, a new headmaster arrives at the venerable school, bringing with him new technology, sharp suits and even girls to the dusty corridors. But while Straitley does his sardonic best to resist these steps toward the future, a shadow from his past begins to stir again. A boy who still haunts Straitley’s dreams 20 years later. A boy capable of terrible things.

The first storm comes from, of all places, the Minnesota zoo. Two large, and very rare, Amur tigers have vanished from their cage, and authorities are worried sick that they’ve been stolen for their body parts. Traditional Chinese medicine prizes those parts for home remedies, and people will do extreme things to get what they need. Some of them are a great deal more extreme than others --- as Virgil Flowers is about to find out. Then there’s the homefront. Virgil’s relationship with his girlfriend Frankie has been getting kind of serious, but when Frankie’s sister Sparkle moves in for the summer, the situation gets a lot more complicated.

What if the African natives developed steam power ahead of their colonial oppressors? What might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier? Fabian Socialists from Great Britain join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner," King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated.

Kate and her husband, Ron, attend a dinner party where they meet another couple, Peter and Jill. Kate and Peter only exchange a few pleasant words, but Kate is suddenly overcome with a burning desire for Peter. Her fixation on him results in an intense, passionate encounter between the two. Confident that her life can now go back to normal, Kate never considers that Peter may not be so willing to move on. Not long after their affair, a masked man barges into the café Kate is sitting in with her best friend, firing an assault weapon indiscriminately into the crowd. This tragedy is the first in a series of horrifying events that will show Kate just how grave the consequences of one mistake can be.

When a teenage boy dies suspiciously on Halloween night, Salem's chief of police, John Rafferty, who is now married to gifted lace reader Towner Whitney, wonders if there is a connection between his death and Salem’s most notorious cold case --- a triple homicide dubbed "The Goddess Murders," in which three young women, all descended from accused Salem witches, were slashed on Halloween night in 1989. He finds unexpected help in Callie Cahill, the daughter of one of the victims newly returned to town. Neither believes that the main suspect, respected local historian Rose Whelan, is guilty of murder or witchcraft. But exonerating Rose might mean crossing paths with a dangerous force.

Venice, 1945. The war may be waning, but the city known as La Serenissima is still occupied and the people of Italy fear the power of the Third Reich. One night, under a canopy of stars, a fisherman named Cenzo comes across a young woman’s body floating in the lagoon and soon discovers that she is still alive and in trouble. Born to a wealthy Jewish family, Giulia is on the run from the Wehrmacht SS. Cenzo chooses to protect Giulia rather than hand her over to the Nazis. This act of kindness leads them into the world of Partisans, random executions, the arts of forgery and high explosives, Mussolini’s broken promises, the black market and gold, and, everywhere, the enigmatic maze of the Venice Lagoon.

As the daughter of a respected general, Elizabeth Schuyler is accustomed to socializing with dignitaries and soldiers. But no visitor to her parents’ home has affected her so strongly as Alexander Hamilton, a charismatic, ambitious aide to George Washington. They marry quickly, and despite the tumult of the American Revolution, Eliza is confident in her brilliant husband and in her role as his helpmate. But it is in the aftermath of war, as Hamilton becomes one of the country’s most important figures, that she truly comes into her own.

Miranda Meadowe lives a relatively solitary life in her rustic country home, but her world dramatically changes when she invites a group of her oldest friends to move in with her. In the beginning, the reunion is joyous. They laugh, dance, drink, behave badly and cling to the heritage they thought would be theirs forever: power, health, stability. But as the days pass, long-forgotten grudges resurface and new tensions emerge. And when an ancient burial site is discovered nearby, the outside world descends upon them. The isolation of the group is breached and the past revealed --- and they realize the future that beckons may be very different from the one they had imagined.

Discovered on a freezing Moscow street by Russian billionaire Vladimir Stanislas, Natasha Leonova has lived for seven years under his protection, immersed in rarefied luxury, while he pursues his activities in a dark world that she guesses at but never sees. Theo Luca is the son of a brilliant, world famous and difficult artist, Lorenzo Luca, who left his wife and son with a fortune in artwork they refuse to sell. Lorenzo’s widow, Maylis, has transformed their home into a celebrated restaurant decorated with her late husband’s paintings. There, on a warm June evening, Theo first encounters Natasha, the most exquisite woman he has ever seen. And there, Vladimir lays eyes on Luca’s artwork. Two dangerous obsessions begin.

In MOST DANGEROUS PLACE, Jack Swyteck takes on a new client tied to his past. It begins at the airport, where Jack is waiting to meet his old high school buddy, Keith Ingraham, a high-powered banker based in Hong Kong, coming to Miami for his young daughter’s surgery. But their long-awaited reunion is abruptly derailed when the police arrest Keith’s wife, Isabelle, in the terminal, accusing her of conspiring to kill the man who raped her in college. Jack quickly agrees to represent Isa, but soon discovers that to see justice done, he must separate truth from lies --- an undertaking that proves more complicated than the seasoned attorney expects.

A decade ago, Ella Brooke’s older sister, Miranda, vanished without a trace. With every passing year, Ella has come to resemble more closely the sister she lost, and now she’s the same age Miranda was when she disappeared. Ella has never let go of her sister. She can still feel Miranda’s presence and hear her voice. She still talks to her. What holds Ella together is her love for her sister’s 10-year-old son and her work as a self-defense expert helping victims. Ella is certain that Miranda was taken and that one man is the key to her disappearance: Jason Thorne. Ignoring warnings from the police and the disapproval of her parents, she seeks Thorne out.

Five hundred years ago, Spanish conquistadors planted the first orange seeds in Florida, but now the whole industry is in trouble. The trees are dying at the root, weakened by infestation and genetic manipulation, and the only solution might be somehow, somewhere, to find samples of the original root stock. No one is better equipped to traverse the swamps and murky backcountry of Florida than Hannah Smith, but once word of her quest leaks out, the trouble begins. “There are people who will kill to find a direct descendant of those first seeds,” a biologist warns her --- and it looks like his words may be all too prophetic.

When a car bomb kills a young man in the Shiprock High School parking lot, Officer Bernadette Manuelito discovers that the intended victim was a mediator for a multi-million-dollar development planned at the Grand Canyon. But what seems like an act of ecoterrorism turns out to be something far more nefarious and complex. Piecing together the clues, Bernadette and her husband, Sergeant Jim Chee, uncover a scheme to disrupt the negotiations and inflame tensions between the Hopi and Dine tribes. Retired Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn has seen just about everything in his long career. As the tribal police’s investigation unfolds, he begins to suspect that the bombing may be linked to a cold case he handled years ago.

Librarian Julia Winston is ready to ditch the quiet existence she's been living. She's made a list of new things to experience, but falling for Jamie Caine, her sexy military pilot neighbor, isn't one of them. However, when two young brothers wind up in Julia's care for the holidays, she'll take any help she can get --- even Jamie's. Happy to step in, Jamie reveals a side of himself that's much harder to resist. Not only is he fantastic with kids, he provides the strength Julia needs to tackle her list. She knows their temporary family can't last beyond the holidays, but the closer she gets to Jamie, the more she wonders if things could be this merry and bright forever.

Heiress Mae Malveaux made up her mind long ago that nobody would decide her fate. To have the pleasure she craves, control is paramount, especially control of the men Mae attracts. Valiant Jackson always gets what he wants --- and he’s wanted Mae for years. The door finally opens for him when Mae strikes a bargain: seduce her virginal young cousin, Cecily, who is engaged to Frank Washington. Frank values her innocence above all else. If successful, Val’s reward will be a night with Mae. But Val secretly seeks another prize. Elizabeth Townsend is fiercely loyal to her church and her civil rights attorney husband. Certainly there is something redeemable in Mr. Jackson. Little does she know that her worst mistake will be Val’s greatest triumph.

Early one morning, 18-year-old Alexandrina Victoria is roused from bed with the news that her uncle William IV has died and she is now Queen of England. The men who run the country have doubts about whether this sheltered young woman can rule the greatest nation in the world. But Victoria has very definite ideas about the kind of queen she wants to be. Everyone keeps saying she is destined to marry her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, but she found him dull and priggish when they met three years ago. She is quite happy being queen with the help of her prime minister, Lord Melbourne, who may be old enough to be her father but is the first person to take her seriously.

When Charlotte Sawyer is unable to contact her stepsister, Jocelyn, to tell her that one of her closest friends was found dead, she discovers that Jocelyn has vanished. In a desperate effort to find her, Charlotte joins forces with Max Cutler, a struggling PI who recently moved to Seattle after his previous career as a criminal profiler went down in flames --- literally. After surviving a near-fatal attack, Charlotte and Max turn to Jocelyn’s closest friends, women in a Seattle-based online investment club, for answers. But what they find is chilling. When her uneasy alliance with Max turns into a full-blown affair, Charlotte has no choice but to trust him with her life.

Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering if there were others out there like himself. WHEN WE RISE is Jones' account of his remarkable life. He chronicles the heartbreak of losing countless friends to AIDS, which very nearly killed him, too; his co-founding of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation during the terrifying early years of the epidemic; his conception of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the largest community art project in history; the bewitching story of 1970s San Francisco and the magnetic spell it cast for thousands of young gay people and other misfits; and the stories of Cleve's passionate relationships with friends and lovers during an era defined by both unprecedented freedom and possibility, and prejudice and violence alike.