Adult

When Gabriel Ash's wife and kids were kidnapped four years ago by Somali pirates, his life spiraled out of control. But with the help of his dog, Patience, and his friendship with young police officer Hazel Best, his focus returned. So when he discovers that his wife is still alive, Ash is once again filled with hope and fear. Hazel is deeply worried for Ash. But even she is unprepared for what Ash seems willing to do to secure the safety of his wife and children. In fact, nothing is as it seems, and loyalty, friendship and family bonds will be called into question.

The secrets of Queen Victoria's sixth child, Princess Louise, may be destined to remain hidden forever. What was so dangerous about this artistic, tempestuous royal that her life has been documented more by rumor and gossip than hard facts? When Lucinda Hawksley started to investigate, often thwarted by inexplicable secrecy, she discovered a fascinating woman, modern before her time, whose story has been shielded for years from public view.

Howard Pink is a wildly successful businessman still struggling to cope 15 years after his 19-year-old daughter disappeared. Beatrice Kizza fled persecution from Uganda where homosexuality is illegal; she now works as a maid at a hotel Howard frequents. Esme Reade, an ambitious staff reporter for a Sunday tabloid, is desperate to get the Howard Pink interview for which all London reporters froth at the mouths. Carol Hetherington, a widow who keeps an eye on her neighbors' actions, makes an astonishing discovery. These four disparate characters find themselves linked together in PARADISE CITY.

Newly minted private investigator William Fletcher is having trouble finding clientele. His past as a former heavyweight contender with a few shady connections --- not to mention the color of his skin in race-obsessed New Orleans --- isn't helping lure clients to his door. Stuck without any viable alternative, he takes a case from an old criminal acquaintance, Storm. His only client assures him that the job is simple: locate his missing estranged daughter, Zella. But when Fletcher starts knocking on doors, he sets off a catastrophic chain of events that turn the city into a bloody battleground between two rival syndicates.

When a highway project construction crew unearths two skeletons in a common grave, Felony Division Chief Claire Talbot reopens an investigation into a string of abductions that took place before she was born. While researching the file, she meets retired cop Marc Hastings, who once worked on the case. Marc has an uncanny familiarity with Claire's habits, and she begins to realize that not all is as it seems.

Eager to be an obedient daughter, Princess Margot accepts her role as a marriage pawn, even as she is charmed by the powerful, charismatic Duc de Guise. Though Margot's heart belongs to Guise, her hand will be offered to Henri of Navarre, a Huguenot leader and a notorious heretic looking to seal a tenuous truce. But the promised peace is a mirage: her mother's schemes are endless, and her brothers plot vengeance in the streets of Paris. When Margot's wedding devolves into the bloodshed of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, she will be forced to choose between her family and her soul.

Ever since Antietam, when he lay delirious among the dead and dying, Trace has been haunted by the country's restless spirits. The curse cost him his family, his calling to the church and damn near his sanity. Then wealthy and reclusive Sabine Fairweather admits to knowing about Trace's curse, and suggests she might be able to help him. As she steers him into one macabre situation after another, his powers flourish. But her meddling has brought Trace to the attention of something much older and more dangerous than any ghost.

In THE BLIZZARD, we are immersed in the atmosphere of a 19th-century Russia. Garin, a district doctor, is desperately trying to reach the village of Dolgoye, where a mysterious epidemic is turning people into zombies. He carries with him a vaccine that will prevent the spread of this terrible disease but is stymied in his travels by an all-consuming snowstorm, an impenetrable blizzard that turns a drive that should last only a few hours into a voyage of days and, finally, a journey into eternity.

In 1668, hangman Jakob Kuisl, his daughter Magdalena, and her husband Simon travel to the town of Bamberg. But what was planned as a family vacation soon becomes a nightmare: a murderer in Bamberg is leaving the severed limbs of victims in the trash outside the city. When rumors quickly spread that the deaths are the work of a werewolf, Jakob must prove the superstition wrong and embarks on a search for the “devil of Bamberg.”

Rachel Jenner is walking in a Bristol park with her eight-year-old son, Ben, when he asks if he can run ahead. It’s an ordinary request on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, and Rachel has no reason to worry --- until Ben vanishes. As hours and then days pass without a sign of Ben, everyone who knew him is called into question. Inevitably, media attention focuses on Rachel, and the public’s attitude toward her begins to shift from sympathy to suspicion. As she desperately pieces together the threadbare clues, Rachel realizes that nothing is quite as she imagined it to be, not even her own judgment.