Adult

Arriving for their honeymoon in Cape May, New Jersey, from Georgia during the off season, Henry and Effie are startled to find the beach town deserted. The abandoned homes and desolate beaches make them shy of each other, so they decide to cut their trip short. But before they leave, they encounter their glamorous, sensual neighbors and become swept up by their drama. Slowly and agonizingly, these deeply flawed characters pull Henry and Effie out of themselves and expose them to a side of desire they never expected. While they discover new truths in each other and in their marriage, the empty beach town becomes their playground. And as they sneak into the vacant summer homes, go sailing and make love, Henry and Effie slip from innocence into betrayal, with irrevocable consequences.

Seraphine Mayes and her twin brother, Danny, were born in the middle of summer at their family's estate on the Norfolk coast. Within hours of their birth, their mother threw herself from the cliffs, the au pair fled, and the village thrilled with whispers of dark cloaks, changelings, and the aloof couple who drew a young nanny into their inner circle. Now an adult, Seraphine mourns the recent death of her father. While going through his belongings, she uncovers a family photograph that raises dangerous questions. It was taken on the day the twins were born --- and in the photo, their mother, surrounded by her husband and her young son, is smiling serenely and holding just one baby. Who is the child, and what really happened that day?

PULP ACCORDING TO DAVID GOODIS starts with six characteristics of 1950s pulp noir that fascinated mass-market readers, making them wish they were the protagonist, and yet feel relief that they were not. His thrillers are set in motion by suppressed guilt, sexual frustrations, explosions of violence and the inaccessible nature of intimacy. Extremely valuable is a gangster-infested urban setting. Uniquely, Goodis saw a still-vibrant community solidarity down there. Another contribution was sympathy for the gang boss, doomed by his very success. The book delineates the noir profundity of the author's work in the context of Franz Kafka's narratives. Goodis' precise sense of place and painful insights about the indomitability of fate parallel Kafka's.

The sister of a murdered musician expects Trevor Galloway not only to solve her brother's homicide, but to recover a vinyl record she believes could ruin his reputation. Galloway knows he should walk away, but when the client closes the meeting by putting a gun under her chin and pulling the trigger, his sense of obligation drags him down a path he may not be ready to travel. As Galloway pieces together the final days of rock and roll legend Jimmy Spartan, he struggles to sort through his own issues. The stoic demeanor that earned Galloway the nickname The Tin Man is tested as he reunites with an old flame, becomes entangled in a Secret Service investigation, and does battle with old enemies.

When conservative law professor Alex Johnson is found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at his house in Chicago, everyone thinks it is suicide. Everyone except his brother, Royce, an FBI agent. Without jurisdiction or leads, Agent Johnson leaves his cases and family to find out who killed his brother. There are many suspects: the ex-wife, an ambitious doctor with expensive tastes and reasons to hate her ex; academic rivals on a faculty divided along political lines; an African-American student who failed the professor’s course. As Agent Johnson peels back layers of mystery in his rogue investigation, the brother he never really knew emerges. Ultimately, he must face the question of how far he is willing to go to catch Alex's killer.

Three Chicago women have been found strangled, embalmed and posed as if still alive. Doubting the findings of the local PD’s profiler, the FBI calls on forensic psychologist Zoe Bentley to investigate. Zoe quickly gets off on the wrong foot with her new partner, Special Agent Tatum Gray. Zoe is a hunter, intense and focused; Tatum is a smug maverick with little respect for the rules. Together, they must descend into a serial killer’s psyche and untangle his twisted fantasies, or more women will die. But when the contents of three inconspicuous envelopes reveal a chilling connection to gruesome murders from Zoe’s childhood, suddenly the hunter becomes the hunted.

She possessed a stunning beauty. She also possessed a stunning mind. Could the world handle both? Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side, understanding more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star. But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: she was a scientist. And she knew a few secrets about the enemy. She had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis...if anyone would listen to her.

How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. When the family’s one success story, an Ivy-educated son, is uprooted by tragedy, he seems likely to join them. In another time, a troubled husband and public servant asks, How can a man tell the truth, and be reviled for it? Science teacher Thatcher Greenwood’s employer forbids him to speak of the exciting work just published by Charles Darwin. His friendships with a female scientist and a renegade newspaper editor threaten to draw him into a vendetta with the town’s powerful men.

The accident that killed Eddie in THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN left an indelible mark on Annie, the young girl whose life he saved. Injured, scarred and unable to remember why, Annie’s life is forever changed by a guilt-ravaged mother who whisks her away from the world she knew. When, as a young woman, she reconnects with Paulo, her childhood love, she believes she has finally found happiness. As the novel opens, Annie is marrying Paulo. But when her wedding night ends in an unimaginable accident, Annie finds herself on her own heavenly journey --- and an inevitable reunion with Eddie, one of the five people who will show her how her life mattered in ways she could not have fathomed.

The drought --- or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it --- has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take long showers. Until the taps run dry. Suddenly, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbors and families turn against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don’t return and her life --- and the life of her brother --- is threatened, Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she’s going to survive.