Adult

You’ll have your deposit within seven business days, just like it says on Getaway.com. I’ve put through a refund to your credit card for the full amount, minus $200 to replace the stained sheets. When 30-year-old Dawn reads Miranda’s email, she sees red. People have always told Dawn she’s beautiful, and she just hopes they don’t see beneath --- to how she grew up, to what she’s always tried to outrun. The email strikes a nerve, with its lying intimation that Dawn is so dirty you need to throw out her sheets. Fifty-seven-year-old Miranda thought she’d seen it all, but she can’t believe her eyes when she reads Dawn’s review. People might think that her life is privileged, but they don’t know what’s really going on. They don’t know about her son.

In September 1998, young reporter Claudia Rowe was working as a stringer for the New York Times in Poughkeepsie, New York, when local police discovered the bodies of eight women stashed in the attic and basement of the small colonial home that 27-year-old Kendall Francois shared with his parents and sister. Rowe became consumed with the desire to understand just how a man could abduct and strangle eight women --- and how a family could live for two years, seemingly unaware, in a house with the victims’ rotting corpses. Reaching out after Francois was arrested, Rowe and the serial killer began a dizzying four-year conversation about cruelty, compassion and control.

When Isabelle Poole meets Dr. Preston Grind, she’s fresh out of high school, pregnant with her art teacher's baby, and totally on her own. Izzy knows she can be a good mother, but without any money or relatives to help, she’s left searching. Dr. Grind, an awkwardly charming child psychologist, has spent his life studying family, even after tragedy struck his own. Now, with the help of an eccentric billionaire, he has the chance to create a “perfect little world” --- to study what would happen when 10 children are raised collectively, without knowing who their biological parents are. He calls it The Infinite Family Project, and he wants Izzy and her son to join. This attempt at a utopian ideal starts off promising, but soon the gentle equilibrium among the families disintegrates.

In the wake of the Civil War, Daniel Murray, born free and educated in Baltimore, was in the vanguard of Washington, D.C.’s black upper class. Though Murray and other black elite of his time were primed to assimilate into the cultural fabric as Americans first and people of color second, their prospects were crushed by Jim Crow segregation and the capitulation to white supremacist groups by the government, which turned a blind eye to their unlawful --- often murderous --- acts. Elizabeth Dowling Taylor traces the rise, fall and disillusionment of upper-class African Americans, revealing that they were a representation not of hypothetical achievement but what could be realized by African Americans through education and equal opportunities.

Thirteen days. That’s all Bernadette “Bird” Sincavage has left to go until she’s done with her probation and can be free again. Her impending freedom is so close she can almost taste it. Trouble soon follows, though, in the form of James Rittenhouse, who she worked with a few years ago. Bird is stunned to see James make the evening news when he’s arrested for assault. But that’s nothing compared to the shock she gets when she discovers James hiding out in an abandoned church choir loft with a gun pointed at her. Will Bird jeopardize her future for someone who helped her out in the past? Or will she turn a blind eye and learn to live with the consequences?

A house is burning, threatening the existence of its six tenants --- including a failed priest; a naturalist; a neurosurgeon; an invalid dreaming of his anxious boyhood; and their landlord, whose relationship to the tenants is both intimate and shadowy. In NIGHT OF FIRE, the passions and obsessions in a dying house loom and shift, from those of the hallucinating drug addict in the basement to the landlord training his rooftop telescope on the night skies. As the novel progresses, the tenants’ diverse stories take us through an African refugee camp, Greek Orthodox monasteries, and the cremation grounds of India. Haunting the edges of their lives are memories. Will these remembrances be consumed forever by the flames? Or can they survive in some form?

A middle-aged Irish immigrant, Billy has a gift for illusion --- making damaged objects look new. His companion, Charles, the smooth-tongued teenage son of a prostitute, is a natural salesman, just like the mythical father he’s never met. Longtime horse traders and partners, they’ve recently turned their talents to trading mules. But in the summer of 1916, these seasoned grifters skilled in the art of the underhanded deal have just been swindled themselves. They’re saddled with the one thing they may not be able to unload: a gorgeous, murderous black mare named The Midnight Cool.

From acclaimed biographer Patricia Bosworth comes a series of vivid confessions about her remarkable journey into womanhood. Married and divorced from an abusive husband before she’s 20, she joins the famed Actors Studio. She takes classes with Lee Strasberg alongside Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman and others; she works on Broadway opposite Paul Muni, Helen Hayes and Elaine Stritch; Gore Vidal and Elia Kazan become her mentors. Her anecdotes of theatre’s Golden Age have never been told before. At the zenith of her career, about to film The Nun’s Story with Audrey Hepburn, Patricia faces a decision that changes her forever.

In 1908, seven-year-old Jialing is abandoned in the courtyard of a once-lavish estate outside Shanghai. Jialing is Eurasian and faces a lifetime of contempt from both Chinese and Europeans. Without her mother’s protection, she can survive only if the estate’s new owners, the Yang family, agree to take her in. Jialing finds allies in Anjuin, the eldest Yang daughter, and Fox, an animal spirit who has lived in the courtyard for centuries. But Jialing’s life as the Yangs’ bondservant changes unexpectedly when she befriends a young English girl who then mysteriously vanishes. Jialing grows into womanhood guided both by Fox and by her own strength of spirit, away from the shadows of her past and toward a very different fate --- if she has the courage to accept it.

Serge A. Storms and Coleman’s adventure traveling the byways of the Sunshine State’s underbelly is about to take a detour. Someone is trying to tilt the odds in the state lottery amidst a conga line of huge jackpots, spinning off more chaos than any hurricane season. With this much at stake, of course every shady character wants in. Crooked bodega owners, drug cartels laundering money through the lottery, and venture capitalists are all trying to game the system --- and lining up to get their cut. They’re also gambling with their lives, because when Serge and Coleman get hip to this timely (and very lucrative) trip, there’s no telling whose number is up next.