Adult

When a young demonstrator is publicly singled out and assassinated by highly trained killers in the heart of protest-charged Athens, Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis is convinced the killing was meant not to take out a target, but as a message. A message from whom? To whom? And why? Kaldis’ search for answers leads him and his team to the breathtakingly beautiful island of Santorini, heralded in legend as the lost island of Atlantis, and to eavesdrop on a hush-hush gathering of Greece’s top military leaders looking to come up with their own response to the overwhelming crises and uncertainties their country faces. Is it a coup d’état, or something else?

Rachel represents two women --- one a widow, one a divorcee --- in a pair of nasty zombie lawsuits, the outcome of each of which hinges upon a clause in a dead man’s document. Rachel’s client Cyndi Mulligan is the trophy widow of the late Bert Mulligan, a billionaire entrepreneur whose last will and testament left his estate to Cyndi’s daughter. The challenge comes from Bert’s angry first wife and her angrier only son. Their claim: Cyndi’s daughter --- born 11 months after Bert’s death --- cannot possibly be Bert’s child. Rachel’s other client is Marsha Knight, the ex-wife of the wealthy founder of a women’s lingerie manufacturer. She’s been sued by his widow, who seeks to invalidate Marsha’s divorce settlement.

Henry Garrick, a local car dealer who was maimed in an accident five months before, has apparently taken his own life. A simple case, it should be wrapped up in a few days. But something doesn’t feel right to Belfast detective Serena Flanagan, despite the fact that there is no evidence of foul play. As she investigates, Flanagan interviews Roberta Garrick, Henry’s widow, who is comforted in her grief by Reverend Peter McKay, rector of the local church and a close family friend. But with the secrets McKay is keeping, he is in no position to help anyone. As Flanagan picks at the threads of the dead man’s life, a disturbing picture emerges, and she realizes that Roberta is not what she seems.

A 19th-century minister builds an elaborate motor that will bring about the Second Coming. A man with rough hands locks a boy in a room with an albino ape. An apocalyptic army falls under a veil of forgetfulness. The story of Red Riding Hood is run through a potentially endless series of iterations. A father invents an elaborate, consuming game for his hospitalized son. Indexes, maps and a checkered shirt buried beneath a blanket of snow are scattered through these pages as clues to mysteries that may never be solved. A TREE OR A PERSON OR A WALL brings together Matt Bell’s previously published shorter fiction, along with seven dark and disturbing new stories.

The latest terror to be visited upon the dark Galway streets arrives in a most unusual form: a Cambridge graduate who becomes murderous over split infinitives, dangling modifiers, and any other sign of bad grammar. Meanwhile, ex-cop Jack Taylor is approached by a grieving father with a pocketful of cash on offer if Jack will help exact revenge on those responsible for his daughter’s brutal rape and murder. Though hesitant to get involved, Jack agrees to get a read on the likely perpetrators. But he is soon derailed by the reappearance of Emily, the chameleon-like young woman who joined forces with Jack to take down her pedophile father and who remains passionate, clever and utterly homicidal.

It is 1936, and Barcelona burns as the Spanish Civil War takes over. The city is a bloodbath. Yet in all this death, the murders of a Marist monk and a young boy, drained of their blood, are strange enough to catch a police inspector’s attention. His quest for justice is complicated by the politics, dangers, and espionage of daily life in a war zone. Narrated by a vampire who thrives in the havoc of the war, this stunning novel is inspired by the true story of a massacre in the early days of the Spanish Civil War.

Robert Quinlan is a 70-year-old historian, teaching at Florida State University, where his wife Darla is also tenured. Their marriage, forged in the fervor of anti-Vietnam-war protests, now bears the fractures of time, both personal and historical. For Robert and Darla, the cracks remain under the surface, whereas the divisions in Robert’s own family are more apparent. He has almost no relationship with his brother, Jimmy. Their father, a veteran of WWII, is coming to the end of his life. And an unstable homeless man whom Robert at first takes to be a fellow Vietnam veteran turns out to have a deep impact not just on Robert, but on his entire family.

As a 16-year-old, Tessa Cartwright was found in a Texas field, barely alive with only fragments of memory as to how she got there. Ever since, the press has pursued her as the lone surviving “Black-Eyed Susan.” Her testimony about those tragic hours put a man on death row. Now, almost two decades later, Tessa is shocked to discover a freshly planted patch of black-eyed susans just outside her bedroom window. As the clock ticks toward the execution, Tessa fears for her sanity, but even more for the safety of her teenaged daughter.

Hurricane Ophelia is bearing down on New York City. And in a matter of hours, six people, along with their families, friends and millions of other New Yorkers living around them, will be caught up in the horrific flooding it unleashes. A day of chaos takes its toll. Lives, belongings and loved ones are swept away. Heroes are revealed as the city and New Yorkers struggle to face a natural disaster of epic proportions. And then the real challenge begins, as the survivors face their futures, with damage to repair and scars to heal.

A gruesome tableau awaits Inspector Konrad Sejer in the oppressive summer heat: a woman and a young boy lay dead in a pool of blood near a dank trailer. The motivation behind the deaths of Bonnie Hayden and her five-year-old son, Simon, is mysterious. Who would brutally stab a defenseless woman and her child? In a parallel story, another mother, Mass Malthe, navigates life with her adult son, Eddie. It’s a relationship some would call too close, since Eddie’s father, a man he obsesses over, abandoned them many years ago.