Adult

The demon Vitrine loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot. And then the angels come, and the city falls. Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost --- and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned. She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever. Together, they unearth the past of the lost city and begin to shape its future. But when war threatens Azril and everything they have built, Vitrine and her angel must decide if they will let the city fall again.

As boys, Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived. Fifteen years later, Rafe is a reclusive artist who has no memory of what happened during those months. Jeremy has become a famed missing persons’ investigator and is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as him and Rafe. The two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes that they will find Emilie’s sister there. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins.

Judy Blume’s books have garnered her fans of all ages for decades and sold tens of millions of copies. But why were people so drawn to them? And why are we still talking about them now in the 21st century? In THE GENIUS OF JUDY, her remarkable story is revealed as never before, beginning with her as a mother of two searching for purpose outside of her home in 1960s suburban New Jersey. The books she wrote starred regular children with genuine thoughts and problems. But behind those deceptively simple tales, she explored the pillars of the growing women’s rights movement, in which girls and women were entitled to careers, bodily autonomy, fulfilling relationships, and even sexual pleasure. In doing so, she created a cohesive, culture-altering vision of modern adolescence.

Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather gray. Worse still, her mother’s family is cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin, Liv. Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family. She becomes fiercely protective of her little cousin, and her warmth and kindness give Funke a place to heal. The two girls grow into adulthood the closest of friends, but the choices their mothers made haunt them. And when a second tragedy occurs, their friendship is torn apart. Against the long shadow of their shared family history, each woman will struggle to chart a path forward, separated by country, misunderstanding and ambition.

My name’s Ernest Cunningham. I used to be a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, until I found myself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones. I’d hoped this Christmas that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays. I was wrong. So here I am, backstage at the show of world-famous magician Rylan Blaze, whose benefactor has just been murdered. My suspects are all professional tricksters: masters of the art of misdirection. My clues are even more abstract: A suspect covered in blood, without a memory of how it got there. A murder committed without setting foot inside the room where it happens. And an Advent calendar. If I can see through the illusions, I know I can solve it. After all, a good murder is just like a magic trick, isn’t it?

The first installment in Neal Stephenson’s Bomb Light cycle, POLOSTAN follows the early life of the enigmatic Dawn Rae Bjornberg. Born in the American West to a clan of cowboy anarchists, Dawn is raised in Leningrad after the Russian Revolution by her Russian father, a party line Leninist who re-christens her Aurora. She spends her early years in Russia but then grows up as a teenager in Montana, before being drawn into gunrunning and revolution in the streets of Washington, D.C., during the depths of the Great Depression. When a surprising revelation about her past puts her in the crosshairs of U.S. authorities, Dawn returns to Russia, where she is groomed as a spy by the organization that later becomes the KGB.

Elly Griffiths has always written short stories to experiment with different voices and genres, as well as to explore what some of her fictional creations such as Ruth Galloway, Harbinder Kaur and Max Mephisto might have done outside of the novels. THE MAN IN BLACK gathers these bite-sized tales all together in one splendid volume. There are ghost stories, cozy mysteries, tales of psychological suspense, and poignant vignettes of love and loss.

Mavis Miller is not a PTA mom. So no one is more surprised than her when she caves to Trisha Holbrook, the long-reigning, slightly terrifying PTA president, and finds herself in charge of the school’s brand-new DEI committee. As one of the few Black parents at this California elementary school, Mavis tries to convince herself this is an opportunity for real change. But things go off the rails at the very first meeting, when the new principal's plans leave Trisha absolutely furious. Later that night, when Mavis spies Trisha in yellow rubber gloves and booties, lugging cleaning supplies and giant black trash bags to her waiting minivan, it’s only natural that her mind jumps to somewhere it surely wouldn’t in the light of day. Except Principal Smith fails to show up for work the next morning and has been MIA since the meeting.

With Christmas around the corner, Ramona Tucker is desperate to get away. She has been lying to her family about her engagement to Malik, her (ex) fiancé. But Ramona is convinced that she can make her pretend wedding real again --- but only if she can avoid everyone discovering her secret at her mother’s Christmas Eve party. In sunny Malibu, Chelsea Flint is an artist who needs money to hold on to the beloved beachside cottage she shared with her late parents. The two women swap homes, thanks to some careful planning by Ramona’s best friend and a sturdy nudge from Chelsea’s gallerist godmother. Ramona’s Malibu dreams of sun and surf are interrupted as her first night brings an unwelcome stranger to her door, making her question who she can trust --- the meddling neighbor Joan, or Jay, the handsome beachside fitness instructor with a secret of his own.

In February 1942, RAF intelligence was baffled by a newly identified radar network on the coast of Nazi-occupied Europe, codenamed Würzburg. British intelligence proposed an assault to capture key components. Incredibly brave agents of the French Resistance risked their lives to probe the German defenses on the Normandy coast. Then a company of Airborne forces were dropped into France in the dead of night amid heavy snow. Launching their attack, the allied soldiers dismantled the German’s radar, and after three nail-biting hours and a fierce battle with Wehrmacht defenders, they escaped in the nick of time using landing-craft that carried them back across the stormy seas to Portsmouth. OPERATION BITING retells this dramatic operation through a gallery of amazing characters.