Adult

Mary Higgins Clark invites you on a tour of Manhattan’s most iconic neighborhoods in this anthology of all-new stories from the Mystery Writers of America. From the Flatiron District (Lee Child) and Greenwich Village (Jeffery Deaver) to Little Italy (T. Jefferson Parker) and Chinatown (S.J. Rozan), you’ll encounter crimes, mysteries, and riddles large and small. Illustrated with iconic photography of New York City, MANHATTAN MAYHEM is a delightful read for armchair detectives and armchair travelers alike.

From the outside in, the Devlin family lead almost-perfect lives. Dashing father Nick is a successful businessman long married to sweetheart Jean, who upholds the family home and throws dinner parties while daughter Lily attends Catholic school and is disciplined into modesty by the nuns. Under the surface, however, the Devlins are silently broken by the death of their little boy. As Nick’s older brother inducts Nick into the cut-throat world of cosmetics, the Devlin family are further fragmented by betrayals and victims of the cruelest kind of hurt.

Everyone knows Hollerans don’t go near Baines, not since Joseph Carl was buried two decades before. But armed with a silver-handled flashlight, Annie Holleran runs through her family’s lavender fields toward the well on the Baines’ place. At the stroke of midnight, she gazes into the water in search of her future. Not finding what she had hoped for, she turns from the well. And when the body she sees there in the moonlight is discovered come morning, Annie will have much to explain and a past to account for.

In the wake of a tragedy that tore her life down to the foundations, Dr. Alison McAdams has lost her way. So when she’s summoned to Napa to care for her ailing father, she’s not sure she has anything to offer him --- or anyone else. But as Ali becomes part of her father’s community, makes new friends of her own, and hears the stories of a generation who survived the Second World War, she begins to find hope again. In a quest to discover the truth about another woman’s lost love, she sets off on a journey across oceans and deep into history. 

1950s Prague is a city of numerous small terrors, of political tyranny, corruption and surveillance. There is no way of knowing whether one’s neighbor is spying for the government, or what one’s supposed friend will say under pressure to a State Security agent. But there are larger terrors, too. When a little boy is murdered at the cinema where his aunt works, the ensuing investigation sheds a little too much light on the personal lives of the cinema’s female ushers, each of whom is hiding a dark secret of her own.

Judy Blume takes us back to the 1950s and introduces us to the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she herself grew up. Here she imagines and weaves together a vivid portrait of three generations of families, friends and strangers, whose lives are profoundly changed during one winter. At the center of an extraordinary cast of characters are 15-year-old Miri Ammerman and her spirited single mother, Rusty. Their warm and resonant stories are set against the backdrop of a real-life tragedy that struck the town when a series of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving the community reeling.

The lives of the Barretts are torn apart when 14-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism and contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts’ plight, resulting in what would become a hit reality TV show. Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry, at which point long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast begin to surface.

It’s been two years since disgraced Illinois governor Ray Perry disappeared from a federal courthouse in Chicago moments after being sentenced to 37 years in prison on corruption charges. P.I. Michael Kelly gets an anonymous email offering to pay him nearly a quarter of a million dollars if he will find Perry. Kelly’s investigation begins with the woman Perry left behind --- his wife, Marie. Ostracized by her former friends and hounded by the feds, Marie tells Kelly she has no idea where her husband is. Like everyone else, Kelly doesn’t believe her.

Annie O’Neill has it all: a cozy Manhattan apartment, a beautiful bookshop and a network of supportive friends. But her father died in her childhood, leaving a hole she has yet to fill. When a mysterious man named Forrester enters the shop and claims to be her father’s oldest friend, she jumps at the chance to discover more. Forrester, though, seems much more interested in telling her a story about a ruthless ganglord and a decades-old betrayal --- a betrayal that has something very much to do with her.

Freedom Oliver was arrested for killing her husband, a cop, 20 years ago. She is now in witness protection, regretting ever making a deal with the Feds and missing her children with a heartache so strong it makes her ill. When she learns that her daughter possibly has been kidnapped, she ventures out on her own, and her troubled past comes roaring back at her: her husband’s vengeful, sadistic family; her brief, terrifying stint in prison; and the family she chose to adopt her kids who are keeping dangerous secrets.