Near the top of Mount Everest, on May 10, 1996, eight climbers died. It was the worst tragedy in the mountain's history. Lou Kasischke was there. AFTER THE WIND tells the harrowing story of what went wrong, as it has never been told before --- including why the climbers were so desperately out of time as the rogue storm struck. His personal story, captured in the title, tells about the intense moments near the top. These moments also revealed the love story that saved his life.

Dorothea Benton Frank once again takes us deep into the heart of the magical Lowcountry where three amazing middle-aged women are bonded by another amazing woman’s death. Through their shared loss, they forge a deep friendship, asking critical questions. Who was their friend, and what did her life mean? Are they living the lives they imagined for themselves? Will they ever be able to afford to retire? How will they maximize their happiness? Security? Health? And, ultimately, their own legacies?

Kate Garrett keeps life simple --- working hard, riding her beloved horses, playing cards with her brothers. Lately, though, she feels a bit restless, especially when family friend Jack Monaghan is around. Sexy and shameless, Jack is the kind of trouble you don't tangle with unless you want your heart broken. Still, Kate could always use his help in learning how to lasso someone a little less high risk.

Greer Hennessy, a movie location scout, must find the perfect undiscovered beach town for a big budget movie. She zeroes in on a sleepy Florida panhandle town but finds a formidable obstacle in the town mayor, Eben Thibadeaux. A born-again environmentalist, he has seen massive damage done to the town by a huge paper company and has no intention of letting anybody screw with his town again. The only problem is that he finds Greer way too attractive for his own good, and knows that her motivation is in direct conflict with his.

Caroline MacAfee is a skilled carpenter, and her daughter Jamie is a talented architect. Together they are the faces of “Gut It!,” a home renovation series on local public television. But when Caroline is told the network wants her daughter to replace her as host, she is devastated. For Jamie, life changes overnight when, soon after learning of the host shift, her father and his new wife die in a car accident that orphans their two-year-old son. Who am I? Both women ask, as the blueprints they've built their lives around suddenly need revising.

One June day, an old book arrives on Simon Watson's doorstep, sent by an antiquarian bookseller who purchased it on speculation. It is a log from the owner of a traveling carnival in the 1700s, who reports strange and magical things, including the drowning death of a circus mermaid. Since then, generations of "mermaids" in Simon's family have drowned --- always on July 24, which is only weeks away. Could there be a curse on Simon's family? What does it have to do with the book, and can he get to the heart of the mystery in time to save his sister?

For as long as she can remember, Ella has longed to feel at home. She traveled from Bangladesh to Brooklyn to live with the Saleems: her uncle Anwar, aunt Hashi, and their beautiful daughter, Charu, her complete opposite. One summer, when Ella returns home from college, she discovers Charu’s friend Maya --- an Islamic cleric’s runaway daughter --- asleep in her bedroom. As the girls have a summer of clandestine adventure and sexual awakenings, Anwar has his own secrets, threatening his 30-year marriage.

After his wife’s death and the collapse of his newspaper, David Harwood has no choice but to uproot his nine-year-old son and move back into his childhood home in Promise Falls, New York. David believes his life is in free fall, and he can’t find a way to stop his descent. Then he comes across a family secret of epic proportions that will affect not only his family, but the entire town.

Talented chef Lou works tirelessly to build her beloved --- yet struggling --- French restaurant Luella's into a success. Looking forward to her wedding and laughing with her employees, it's smooth sailing. Until the morning she discovers her fiance in the buff with an intern. Meanwhile, the day that a mean-spirited review of Luella's runs courtesy of a food critic named Al, the two cross paths in a pub. It’s only a matter of time before the two fall in love. But when the truth about the review comes out, can Lou overlook the past to chase her future?

Former “It Girl” Janie Jenkins is acerbic, whip smart, and fresh out of prison. Ten years ago, at the height of her glamour and fame, she was incarcerated for the murder of her mother, a philanthropist best known for her string of rich husbands. Now, released on a technicality, Janie chops off her trademark hair, determined to chase down the one lead she has about her mother’s killer. The only problem? Janie doesn’t know if she’s the killer she’s looking for.

If life is a journey --- with detours, paths from which to choose, and myriad roadblocks to overcome --- then Otto Ringling is most certainly on the journey of a lifetime. His first 50 or so years were pretty good. He felt he had it all, until one day he didn’t. Seeking understanding, he calls on Volya Rinpoche, a wise man and spiritual leader. But it turns out that Rinpoche is experiencing his own time of doubt. In hopes of finding answers to life’s mysteries, the two embark on a journey through America, an amusing and enlightening road trip that becomes a lesson in love and gratitude.

When Ibby Bell’s father dies unexpectedly in the summer of 1964, her mother unceremoniously deposits Ibby with her eccentric grandmother, Fannie. Fannie’s New Orleans house is like no place Ibby has ever been --- and Fannie, who has a tendency to end up in the local asylum --- is like no one she has ever met. Fortunately, Fannie’s black cook, Queenie, and her smart-mouthed daughter, Dollbaby, take it upon themselves to initiate Ibby into the ways of the South, both its grand traditions and its darkest secrets.

Growing up on her family’s Sonoma vineyard, Georgia Ford learned some important secrets. The secret number of grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine: 800. The secret ingredient in her mother’s lasagna: chocolate. The secret behind ending a fight: hold hands. But just a week before her wedding, 30-year-old Georgia discovers her beloved fiancé has been keeping a secret so explosive, it will change their lives forever.

Lottie Wilkinson, Rose Arbuthnot, Caroline Dester and Beverly Fisher each decide to take a break from their current lives to spend time at Hopewell Cottage, an old, pretty cottage on a small island. When they arrive, they are transformed by the salt air, the breathtaking views, and the long, lazy days. Gradually, the ladies begin to open up: to one another and to the possibilities of lives quite different from the ones they’ve been leading. Change can’t be that hard, can it?

Evelyn Beegan has long felt like an outsider to her privileged peers, but when she lands a job at a social-network startup aimed at the elite, she has no choice but to infiltrate their world. Soon she finds herself navigating the promised land of Adirondack camps, Hamptons beach houses and the island of Manhattan itself. Intoxicated by the wealth, access and influence of her new set, Evelyn can’t help but try to pass as old money herself. But when the lies become more tangled, she grasps with increasing desperation as the ground beneath her begins to give way.

Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, who are determined that their middle daughter will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. However, when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart.

In THE FALL OF PRINCES, Robert Goolrick brings to vivid life a world of excess and self-indulgence, where limousines waited for hours outside Manhattan’s newest trendy club or the latest dining hot spot. Where drugs were bountiful and not refused. Where no price was too high and flesh was always on offer. Where a quick trip to Europe or a weekend on the coast or a fabulous Hamptons beach house were just part of what was expected. When the money just kept coming and coming and coming...until it didn’t.

Harry has always looked on the bright side of things --- until one day he stumbles into a situation that leads straight into darkness, danger, and death. Overnight he is trapped in a conspiracy rooted deep in his past. Now he cannot tell if he is tracking a killer, or if the killer is tracking him and his assistant Friday, the only woman he has ever loved. Turning to the authorities only makes things worse. With both Harry and Friday on the run --- hunted by the police, the killer, and even Harry's friends and relatives --- the chances for survival look grim. Outmatched, outmanned, and outgunned, Harry discovers that he has challenged and threatened men as ruthless as they are powerful, as cunning as they are cruel, and he knows only one thing for sure: He can trust no one.

A goldfish named Ian is falling from the 27th-floor balcony on which his fishbowl sits. He's longed for adventure, so when the opportunity arises, he escapes from his bowl, clears the balcony railing and finds himself airborne. Plummeting toward the street below, Ian witnesses the lives of the Seville on Roxy residents.

1870s India. In a tiny village where society is ruled by a caste system and women are defined solely by marriage, young Biren Roy dreams of forging a new destiny. When his mother suffers the fate of widowhood, Biren devotes his life to effecting change. Just when his vision for the future begins to look hopeless, he meets Maya, the independent-minded daughter of a local educator, and his soul is reignited. It is in her love that Biren finally finds his home, and in her heart that he finds the hope for a new world.

Three very different people find themselves bound together by need and torn apart by blind obsessions and conflicting goals: Henry “Schuler” Jefferson, son of German immigrants from Midwestern farm country; Cora Rose Haviland, a young woman of privilege whose family has lost their fortune; and Charles “Gil” Gilchrist, an emotionally damaged WWI veteran pilot. Each one holds a secret that, if exposed, would destroy their friendship. But their journey of adventure and self-discovery has a price --- and one of them won’t be able to survive it.

When tragedy rears its head with an industrial leak that kills and sickens residents of Friendswood, Texas, it pulls on the common thread that runs through the community, intensifying everything. From a confused 15-year-old girl beset by visions, to a high school football star tormented by his actions, to a mother galvanized by the death of her teen daughter, to a morally bankrupt father trying to survive his mistakes, René Steinke explores what happens when families are trapped in the ambiguity of history’s missteps --- when the actions of a few change the lives and well-being of many.

When New York journalist and recently bereaved mother Charlotte “Charlie” Cates begins to experience vivid dreams about children, she is sure that she has lost her mind. Yet these are not the nightmares of a grieving parent, she soon realizes. They are messages and warnings that will help Charlie and the children she sees, if only she can make sense of them. After a little boy in a boat appears in Charlie’s dreams asking for her help, Charlie finds herself entangled in a 30-year-old missing-child case that has never ceased to haunt Louisiana’s prestigious Deveau family.

Since childhood, Wylie Rose has been drawn to the charming, close-knit Bonet siblings. But none affected him more than the enchanting Cesca, a girl blessed with incandescent beauty and a wild, irrepressible spirit. Growing up, Wylie’s friendship with her brother, Aurelio, a budding painter of singular talent, brings him near Cesca’s circle. A young woman confident in her charms, Cesca is amused by Wylie’s youthful sensuality and trusting innocence. Toying with his devotion, she draws him closer to her fire --- ultimately ruining him for any other woman.

An extraordinary new writer makes her literary debut with this suspenseful novel of desire, obsession, power and vulnerability, in which a crisis of inheritance leads to the downfall of a wealthy family of Persian Jews in early twentieth-century Iran.

After a string of betrayals and the loss of her legacy, Portia Cuthcart is determined to start a new life with her sisters in Manhattan…and never cook again. But when Portia moves into a dilapidated brownstone on the Upper West Side, she meets 12-year-old Ariel and her widowed father, Gabriel. Soon, a promise made to her sisters forces Portia back into a world of magical food and swirling emotions, where she must confront everything she has been running from.

Originally written in the mid-1950s, GO SET A WATCHMAN was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014. GO SET A WATCHMAN features many of the characters from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD some 20 years later. Returning home to Maycomb to visit her father, Jean Louise Finch --- Scout --- struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society, and the small Alabama town that shaped her.

After learning that her husband is leaving her for another woman, Sophie impulsively rents a guest cottage on Nantucket and leaves Boston for a quiet family vacation with her two kids. Trevor Black has recently lost his wife and is raising a little boy on his own. Hoping a quiet summer on the Nantucket coast will help him reconnect with Leo, he rents a guest house on the beautiful island. When Sophie and Trevor realize they’ve mistakenly rented the same house, the two agree to share it. But as the summer unfolds, Sophie and Trevor must ask themselves if the guest cottage is all they want to share.

Maris’ safe suburban world was shattered the day her daughter was found murdered, presumably at the hands of the young woman’s boyfriend. Her marriage crumbling, her routine shattered, Maris walks away from her pampered life as a Bay Area mom the day she receives a call from Ron, father of her daughter’s killer. Wracked with guilt over his son’s actions (and his own possible contribution to them), he asks Maris a single question: Should he jump? With a man’s life in her hands, Maris must decide, perhaps for the first time, what she truly wants.

A group of strangers are taken hostage inside Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and all of Manhattan is poised to react. When it becomes clear that the centuries-old cathedral itself is in peril, FBI agent Eve Rossi and her team of ex-cons are tasked with identifying the mastermind behind this dastardly plot. Eve is up against a rapidly ticking clock. But the dangerous man calling the shots has a timetable of his own --- and a searing question for his targets: What are you guilty of?

Ella is young, beautiful and deeply in love --- until her husband dies in a tragic sailing accident while trying to save her. Or so she'll have everyone believe. Screenwriter Hunter needs a hit, but crippling writers' block and a serious lack of motivation are getting him nowhere. He's on the lookout for a love story. It doesn't matter who it belongs to. When Hunter and Ella meet in Watersend, South Carolina, it feels like the perfect match, something close to fate. But one lie leads to another, and soon they find themselves caught in a web of deceit.

Leonora, known to some as Lee and others as Nora, is a reclusive crime writer, unwilling to leave her “nest” of an apartment unless it is absolutely necessary. When a friend she hasn’t seen or spoken to in years unexpectedly invites Nora (Lee?) to a weekend away in an eerie glass house deep in the English countryside, she reluctantly agrees to make the trip. Forty-eight hours later, she wakes up in a hospital bed injured but alive, with the knowledge that someone is dead.

The Maguire brothers each have their own driving, single-minded obsession. For Jonathan, it is his magnificent, talented and desirable wife, Harriet. For Roger, it is the elaborate universe he has constructed in a shed in their parents' garden, populated by millions of tiny insects. Following a series of strange and disturbing incidents, Jonathan begins to question every story he has ever been told about his brother --- and if he has so completely misjudged Roger's mind, what else might he have overlooked about his family and himself?

In the wake of a tragedy that tore her life down to the foundations, Dr. Alison McAdams has lost her way. So when she’s summoned to Napa to care for her ailing father, she’s not sure she has anything to offer him --- or anyone else. But as Ali becomes part of her father’s community, makes new friends of her own, and hears the stories of a generation who survived the Second World War, she begins to find hope again. In a quest to discover the truth about another woman’s lost love, she sets off on a journey across oceans and deep into history. 

When Lars Thorvald’s wife, Cynthia, falls in love with wine --- and a dashing sommelier --- he’s left to raise their baby, Eva, on his own. He’s determined to pass on his love of food to his daughter. As Eva grows, she finds her solace and salvation in the flavors of her native Minnesota. Each ingredient represents one part of Eva’s journey as she becomes the star chef behind a legendary and secretive pop-up supper club, culminating in an opulent and emotional feast that’s a testament to her spirit and resilience.

In this world, Dr. Charlotte “Charlie” Stone skillfully probes the twisted minds of incarcerated serial killers to better understand what makes them tick, and to help nab those who remain at large. But in the next world, Charlie’s ghostly lover --- convicted killer Michael Garland --- is facing death yet again. It seems that the only way Charlie can snatch Michael from the jaws of oblivion is by proving his innocence. And this dead man’s dead ringer may just be the key.

For more than a decade, Jenna Metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother, Alice, who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident. Desperate to find the truth, Jenna enlists two unlikely allies in her quest: Serenity Jones, a psychic who rose to fame finding missing persons, and Virgil Stanhope, a private detective who originally had investigated Alice’s case. As the three work together to uncover what happened to Alice, they realize that in asking hard questions, they’ll have to face even harder answers.

Maggie, Lindsey and Nina have been friends for most of their lives. The girls grew up together in a dead-end Florida town on the outskirts of Orlando, and the love and loyalty they have for one another have been their only constants. Now 19 and restless, the girls spend empty summer days bouncing between unfulfilling jobs, the beach, and their favorite local bar, The Shamrock. It’s there that a chance encounter with a movie star on the last night of his life changes everything.

When Eva's mother abandons her on her half-sister Iris's front porch, the girls don't seem to have much in common. Thrown together with no mothers to care for them and a father who could not be considered a parent, Eva and Iris become family. Iris wants to be a movie star, while Eva is her sidekick. The sisters look out for each other through good and bad, until unexpected events send Iris to London, leaving Eva with a responsibility she never could have imagined.

As a divorce lawyer for Manhattan’s elite, David Greenfield is privy to the intimate, dirty details of failed marriages. He knows he’s lucky to be married to Blair, who he loves more today than he did when they tied the knot. Then seductive photographer Jean Coin asks David to be her lover for six weeks, until she leaves for Timbuktu. Tempted, David reasons that “it’s not cheating if your wife’s there.” A one-night threesome would relieve the pressure of monogamy without wrecking their marriage. What harm could come of fulfilling his longtime sexual fantasy?

Eighteen-year-old Ada Concannon has just been hired by the respected but eccentric Dickinson family of Amherst, Massachusetts. Despite their difference in age and the upstairs-downstairs divide, Ada strikes up a deep friendship with Miss Emily, the gifted elder daughter living a spinster’s life at home. But Emily’s passion for words begins to dominate her life. When Ada’s safety and reputation are threatened, however, Emily must face down her own demons in order to help her friend --- with shocking consequences.

Raised in the southern splendor of Natchez, Mississippi, Penn Cage learned all he knows of duty from his father, Dr. Tom Cage. But now the beloved family doctor has been accused of murdering the African American nurse with whom he worked in the dark days of the 1960s. Penn's quest for the truth sends him deep into his father's past, where a sexually charged secret lies. More chilling, this long-buried sin is only one thread in a conspiracy of greed and murder involving the vicious Double Eagles, an offshoot of the KKK controlled by some of the most powerful men in the state.

The summer Lois and Carly May were 12 years old, they were kidnapped, driven across the country, and held in a cabin in the woods for two months by a charismatic stranger. Nearly 20 years later, Lois has become a professor, while Carly May is an actress, drinking too much and struggling to revive her career. When a movie with a shockingly familiar plot draws the two women together once more, they must face the public exposure of their secret history and confront the dark longings and unspeakable truths that haunt them still.

Opening in Normandy on June 29, 1944, THE RACE FOR PARIS follows two American female war correspondents on their quest to document (and make) history by covering the Allied liberation of Paris. Jane is a young, single journalist for the Nashville Banner. When she’s assigned to cover a field hospital, she meets Olivia, “Liv,” an Associated Press photographer. However, due to their gender, Liv and Jane are constantly confronted by red tape. Reluctantly accompanied by Fletcher, a male British military reporter, the two women go AWOL and chase their story through gunfire, carnage and death scarring the French countryside. 

Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to join Dublin’s Murder Squad when 16-year-old Holly Mackey arrives in his office with a photo of a popular boy whose body was found at a girls’ boarding school a year earlier. The photo had been posted at “The Secret Place,” the school’s anonymous gossip board, and the caption says “I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.” Stephen joins with Detective Antoinette Conway to reopen the case. The private underworld of teenage girls turns out to be more mysterious and more dangerous than the detectives imagined.

Alexander Feldmann is a revered and sought-after performer. After years of searching, he acquires a glorious cello, the Silver Swan, a rare Stradivarius masterpiece long lost to the world of music. Mariana is Alexander’s only child, and the maestro has large ambitions for her. By the age of 19 she emerges as a star cellist in her own right, and is seen as the inheritor of her father’s genius. Mariana believes the Silver Swan will be hers one day, until a stunning secret from her father’s past entwines her fate and that of the Silver Swan in ways she never could have imagined.

In the summer of 1938, Layla Beck’s father, a United States senator, cuts off her allowance and demands that she find employment on the Federal Writers’ Project, a New Deal jobs program. Within days, Layla has been assigned to cover the history of the remote mill town of Macedonia, West Virginia. But once she secures a room in the home of the unconventional Romeyn family, she is drawn into their complex world and soon discovers that the truth of the town is entangled in the thorny past of the Romeyn dynasty.

For 14 years, Letty Espinosa has worked three jobs around San Francisco to make ends meet while her mother raised her children in their tiny apartment on a forgotten spit of wetlands near the bay. But now Letty’s parents are returning to Mexico, and Letty must step up and become a mother for the first time in her life. She comes up with a plan to help the family escape the dangerous neighborhood and heartbreaking injustice that have marked their lives. But one wrong move could jeopardize everything she’s worked for and her family’s fragile hopes for the future.

Roberta Gilbert, owner of Primrose Haus, has been hosting events at her charming Victorian for 30 years. She's an expert on weddings, but not on mother-daughter relations. When her daughter, Daphne, comes home and decides to help with the business, the receptions become truly memorable --- and not in a good way. Then there's the added complication of Roberta's gardener, who seems more interested in Daphne than he is in planting primroses.

Alice Pearse is a mostly happily married mother of three, an attentive daughter, an ambivalent dog-owner, a part-time editor, a loyal neighbor and a Zen commuter. When her husband makes a radical career change, Alice is ready to lean in --- and she knows exactly how lucky she is to land a job at Scroll, a hip young start-up that promises to be the future of reading. She is proud of her new “balancing act” until her dad gets sick, her marriage flounders, her babysitter gets fed up, her kids start to grow up, and her work takes an unexpected turn.

It starts as an ordinary day in an ordinary town, at an ordinary air show. But when one of the planes crashes, killing and injuring dozens, a 13-year-old named Ava is discovered healing her best friend, Wash. Her secret gift is now known to the entire world, and Ava is thrust into the spotlight. But at what cost does this gift come, and how much will Ava have to sacrifice to save the one she loves most?