Adult

Anna Fox lives alone --- a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times...and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, mother and their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble --- and its shocking secrets are laid bare. What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW, no one --- and nothing --- is what it seems.

As an old house is demolished in a gentrifying section of London, a workman discovers a tiny skeleton, buried for years. For journalist Kate Waters, it’s a story that deserves attention. She cobbles together a piece for her newspaper, but at a loss for answers, she can only pose a question: Who is the Building Site Baby? As Kate investigates, she unearths connections to a crime that rocked the city decades earlier: A newborn baby was stolen from the maternity ward in a local hospital and was never found. Her heartbroken parents were left devastated by the loss. But there is more to the story, and Kate is drawn --- house by house --- into the pasts of the people who once lived in this neighborhood that has given up its greatest mystery.

Ronni Sunshine left London for Hollywood to become a beautiful, charismatic star of the silver screen. But at home, she was a narcissistic, disinterested mother who alienated her three daughters. Still, when Ronni discovers she has a serious illness, she calls her now-adult girls home to fulfill her final wishes. And though Nell, Meredith and Lizzy have never been close, their mother’s illness draws them together to confront the old jealousies and secret fears that have threatened to tear these sisters apart. As they face the loss of their mother, they will discover if blood might be thicker than water after all.

For the lovely Billy Harper, Butternut Lake is the place she feels most at home, even though lately she feels that the only one listening to her is Murphy, her faithful Labrador Retriever. Her teenage son, Luke, has gone from precious to precocious practically overnight. Her friends are wrapped up in their own lives, and Luke’s father, Wesley, disappeared before his son was even born. But Billy is about to learn that anything is possible during the heady days of summer. Coming to terms with her past --- the death of her father, the arrival of Cal Cooper, a complicated man with a definite interest in Billy, even the return of Wesley --- will force her to have a little bit of faith in herself and others...and realize that happiness doesn’t always mean perfection.

Three years have passed since estate-clearing handyman Jay Porter almost lost his life following a devastating accident on the thin ice of Echo Lake. The traumatic, uncredited events cost him his wife and his son, and left him with a permanent leg injury. Jay is just putting his life back together when a mysterious stranger stops by with an offer too good to be true: a large sum of cash in exchange for finding a missing teenage boy who may have been abducted by a radical recovery group. Skeptical of gift horses and weary of reenlisting in the local drug war, Jay passes on the offer. The next day his boss is found beaten and left for dead, painting Jay the main suspect. As clues begin to tie the two cases together, Jay finds himself back on the job and back in the line of fire.

It is the summer of 1992, and a gypsy moth invasion blankets Avalon Island. It is also the summer Leslie Day Marshall --- the only daughter of Avalon's most prominent family --- returns with her husband, a botanist, and their children to live in "The Castle," the island's grandest estate. Leslie's husband Jules is African-American, their children are bi-racial, and islanders from both sides of the tracks form fast and dangerous opinions about the new arrivals. Maddie Pencott LaRosa falls in love with Brooks, their son, and that love feels as urgent to Maddie as the questions about the new and deadly cancers showing up across the island. Could Grudder Aviation, the pride of the island --- and its patriarch, the Colonel --- be to blame?

The year is 1972, and the beaches of Los Angeles are the center of the world. Dropping into the embers of the drug and surf scene is Suzy Whitman, who has tossed her newly minted Vassar degree aside to follow her older sister into open skies and the borderless adventures of stewardessing for Grand Pacific Airlines. In Sela del Mar, California --- a hedonistic beach town in the shadow of LAX --- Suzy skateboards, suntans, and flies daily and nightly across the country. Motivated by a temporary escape from her past, and a new taste for danger and belonging, Suzy falls into a drug-trafficking scheme that clashes perilously with the skyjacking epidemic of the day.

When former prosecutor Cal Claxton’s neighbor, Jim Kavanaugh, the owner and gifted vintner of an up-and-coming winery, is accused of murdering his wife, his freedom --- and the grape harvest --- is suddenly in jeopardy along with his reputation, and his business begins to slide. No gentleman farmer, this puts the rugged winemaker's property, his only financial asset, in play. When a blackmail plot is hatched against the owner of adjacent land, it begins to look like a brutal game of real-life Monopoly is underway. Cal agrees to defend Jim, a good friend, which pulls him reluctantly into the blackmail plot and might well make him the next target of a vicious, cunning killer.

In GENEROUS FRUITS, the first comprehensive chronicle of American homesteading from earliest settlement to the current day, author Barbara Bamberger Scott quickly establishes her voice as a passionate urban homesteader and accomplished writer. Scott’s personal, "I’ve-been-there" approach to the subject --- its roots and branches, its past and future --- targets both the avid practitioner and the armchair philosopher.

Single dad Hogan Guthrie is getting his life back on track, and working as the "barbecue master" at a local diner is just a temporary detour. He and restaurant owner Violet Shaw constantly butt heads…until one night they end up mingling other parts instead. Nathan Hawley traded his SWAT team credentials for a sheriff's badge, but a gorgeous new neighbor is shaking up his orderly life. Nathan has a hunch there's more to Brooklin Sweet than meets the eye --- but given her caution about getting involved, he has his work cut out for him. Still, there's something about the elusive beauty Nathan can't walk away from --- and helping her come to terms with her past might pave the way to the future they both secretly long for.