Adult

In downtown Chicago, a young woman named Esther Vaughan disappears from her apartment without a trace. A haunting letter addressed to My Dearest is found among her possessions, leaving her friend and roommate, Quinn Collins, to wonder where Esther is and whether or not she's the person Quinn thought she knew. Meanwhile, in a small Michigan harbor town an hour outside Chicago, a mysterious woman appears in the quiet coffee shop where 18-year-old Alex Gallo works as a dishwasher. He is immediately drawn to her charm and beauty, but what starts as an innocent crush quickly spirals into something far more dark and sinister than he ever expected.

Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper lives a simple life. But on the one-year anniversary of his wife Miriam’s death, something changes. Sorting through Miriam’s possessions, Arthur finds an exquisite gold charm bracelet he’s never seen before. What follows is a surprising and unforgettable odyssey that takes Arthur from London to Paris and as far as India in an epic quest to find out the truth about his wife’s secret life before they met --- a journey that leads him to find hope, healing and self-discovery in the most unexpected places.

When ex-Navy SEAL Nick Foley travels to China to find purpose and escape the demons of his past, he instead stumbles into a conspiracy his Special Forces training never prepared him for. A mysterious and deadly outbreak ravages a remote area of western China, and Nick finds himself the lead suspect in a bio-terrorism investigation being conducted by China's elite Snow Leopard counter-terrorism unit. To clear his name and avoid prosecution, he must team up with beautiful Chinese CDC microbiologist Dr. Dazhong “Dash” Chen to find who is really behind the attack. As their investigation proceeds, their budding friendship is tested by nationalistic loyalties and suspicion.

Steve Case was on the leading edge of the Internet revolution when he cofounded AOL in 1991. He was an entrepreneur in a business that hadn’t even been invented, yet he saw how significantly his efforts could change not only America, but the world. In THE THIRD WAVE, Case uses his insights garnered from nearly four decades of working as an innovator, investor and businessperson to chart a path for future visionaries.

When Logan West impulsively answers a dead man’s ringing phone, he triggers a global race against the clock to track down an unknown organization searching for an Iraqi artifact that is central to a planned attack in the Middle East --- one that will draw the United States into a major conflict with Iran. Logan, a former Marine officer, is quickly contracted as a “consultant” to assist the FBI as part of a special task force bent on stopping the shadowy operatives, whatever the cost. Meanwhile, Logan is battling his own demons, especially the trauma of the ambush that his Force Recon unit suffered at an insurgent torture compound in Fallujah in 2004, which threatens to destroy everything he holds dear.

When an intricate old map is found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, at first it seems no more than a curiosity. But the closer the villagers look, the stranger it becomes. Given to Armand Gamache as a gift the first day of his new job, the map eventually leads him to shattering secrets. It leads the former Chief of Homicide for the Sûreté du Québec to places even he is afraid to go but must. There he finds four young cadets in the Sûreté academy, along with a dead professor. And, with the body, a copy of the old, odd map. The focus of the investigation soon turns to Gamache himself, his mysterious relationship with one of the cadets, and his possible involvement in the crime.

Poland, 1944. Alfred Mendl and his family are brought on a crowded train to a Nazi concentration camp after being caught trying to flee Paris with forged papers. A renowned physicist, Mendl holds knowledge that only two people in the world possess. And the other is already at work for the Nazi war machine. In Washington, DC, Intelligence lieutenant Nathan Blum routinely decodes messages from occupied Poland. But never did he expect the proposal he receives from “Wild” Bill Donovan, head of the OSS: to sneak into the most guarded place on earth on a mission to find and escape with one man --- the one man the Allies believe can ensure them victory in the war.

Seventeen-year-old Ivan Isaenko is a life-long resident of the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus. For the most part, every day is exactly the same for Ivan, which is why he turns everything into a game, manipulating people and events around him for his own amusement. Until Polina arrives. She steals his books. She challenges his routine. The nurses like her. Soon, he cannot help being drawn to her, and the two forge a romance that is tenuous and beautiful and everything they never dared dream of. Before, he survived by being utterly detached from things and people. Now, Ivan wants something more: he wants Polina to live.

Ruddy McCann is finally getting his life back on track. He has a beautiful fiancé, a somewhat stable job stealing cars, and a lazy, lovable basset hound. With his job suddenly in jeopardy, his fiancé wanting a break, and a new court-ordered psychiatrist insisting he take his medication or violate the terms of his probation, Ruddy finds himself missing the one thing he thought he would be happy to be rid of --- the voice of Alan Lottner, dead realtor and Ruddy's future father-in-law. When a woman tells Ruddy that the tragedy that defines his life may be a lie, Ruddy starts to investigate the disappearances of women in the area and soon discovers that his own redemption may be within reach.