Adult

Henry Plageman is a master secret-keeper. A former Lutheran minister, he lost his faith after losing his infant son, Jack, many years ago; his wife, Marilyn, remains consumed by grief. But Henry has another life --- another woman and another child --- unknown to Marilyn. His lover, Lucy, yearns for a man she can be with openly, while their eight-year-old daughter, Blue, tries to make sense of her parents’ fractured lives. THE HALF WIVES follows these interconnected characters through one momentous day, May 22, 1897, the 16th anniversary of Jack’s birth.

Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband, while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother’s happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON, Elizabeth Strout's celebrated New York Times bestseller) returns to visit her siblings after 17 years of absence.

When an Army trucker goes AWOL before her third deployment, she ends up sleeping in Central Park. There, she meets a Vietnam vet and widower who inherited a tumbledown Borscht Belt resort. Converted into a halfway house for homeless veterans, the Standard --- and its 2,000 acres over the Marcellus Shale Formation --- is coveted by a Houston-based multinational company. Toward what end, only a corporate executive knows. With three violent acts at its center --- a mauling, a shooting, a mysterious death decades in the past --- and set largely in the Catskills, THE STANDARD GRAND spans an epic year in the lives of its diverse cast.

As a young girl, Neave was often stuck in a world that didn’t know what to do with her. As her mother not unkindly told her, she was never going to grow up to be a great beauty. Her glamorous sister, Lilly, moved easily through the world. Her brother didn’t want a girl joining his group of friends. And their small town of Lynn, Massachusetts, didn’t have a place for a girl whose feelings often put her at war with the world. But through an unexpected friendship, Neave finds herself with a forbidden copy of The Pirate Lover, a steamy romance, and discovers a world of passion, love and betrayal. And it is to this world that as a grown-up she retreats to again and again when real life becomes too much.

Chris Brennan is applying for a job as a high school government teacher, and he's ready to step in as an assistant baseball coach. But everything about him is a lie. Raz is a high school pitcher who may have a future in the major leagues. However, his father died only a few months ago, leaving him in a vulnerable place where any new father figure might influence him for good, or for evil. Jordan is shy, and his mother fears he is being lured down a dark path by one of his teammates. Mindy doesn’t know that her husband and her son, Evan, are keeping secrets from her --- secrets that might destroy them all. At the center of all of them is Chris Brennan. Why is he there? What does he want? And what is he willing to do to get it?

FBI agents Jessica Harlow and John Shepherd have a past. The former lawyer and cocky Army Ranger clashed during their training at Quantico and gladly went their separate ways after graduating from the Academy. Six years later, the last thing either of them expects is to be assigned to work as partners in a high-profile undercover sting. Jessica is eager to prove herself at her new field office, and John is just one case away from his dream assignment to the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team. They’ll have to find a way to work together --- a task that becomes even trickier when they’re forced to hole up at a romantic beachfront resort as part of the investigation.

Raised off the grid in an abusive home, Margaret Douglas’ only escape was the nearby forest where she sought refuge. There, she discovered a strange gift: the ability to understand animals and to communicate with them. But her abilities have not gone unnoticed, and there are those who would use them for their own purposes. Determined not to be a pawn in anyone’s game, every time someone gets too close, Margaret uproots her life and outruns them. When CIA operative John Lassiter breaks into Margaret’s apartment, she vanishes again, but Lassiter has good reason to be persistent. As a CIA operative, he owes his life to his men, one of whom is being held captive by an unrelenting enemy --- an enemy who has set his sights on Margaret.

Everything about 15-year-old Cat’s new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter until she meets her neighbor: the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat is quickly drawn into Marlena’s orbit, and as she catalogues a litany of firsts --- first drink, first cigarette, first kiss, first pill --- Marlena’s habits harden and calcify. Within a year, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby. Now, decades later, Cat must try again to move on, even as the memory of Marlena calls her back.

Aliki is one of the last of her kind, a lamenter who mourns and celebrates the passing of life. She is part of an evolving Greece, one moving steadily away from its rural traditions. To capture the fading folk art of lamenting, an American researcher asks Aliki to record her laments, but in response, Aliki sings her own story. It begins in a village in northeast Greece, where Aliki witnesses the occupying Nazi soldiers execute her father for stealing squash. Taken in by her friend Takis’ mother, Aliki is joined by a Jewish refugee and her son, Stelios. When the village is torched and its people massacred, Aliki, Takis and Stelios are able to escape just as the war is ending. They’re bound by friendship and grief, but torn apart by betrayal, madness and heartbreak.

The Knights of the Golden Circle was the largest and most dangerous clandestine organization in American history. It amassed billions in stolen gold and silver, all buried in hidden caches across the country. Treasure hunters searched for over a century, but little of that immense wealth was ever found --- until now. When the news about the found treasure gets out, two factions of what remains of the Knights rush to seize their fair share. Thrust into this battle is former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone, who has his own ancestral connection to the Knights --- one that is far more complicated than he ever could have imagined.