Adult

Kendra Michaels was instrumental in bringing serial killer Eric Colby to justice. And yet, despite his apparent execution, Kendra is convinced that Colby is still alive. The problem is that she can't prove it. Even her razor-sharp powers of observation --- developed to an amazing capacity during the 20 years she spent blind and now in constant demand by law enforcement agencies --- have gotten her nowhere. But then a reporter who very publicly humiliated Kendra is murdered. Visiting the crime scene in search of anything that might link the brutal homicide to Colby, Kendra instead finds evidence that points to her.

Actress Lizzie Pepper was America’s Girl Next Door, and her marriage to Hollywood mega-star Rob Mars was tabloid gold. But fame, beauty and wealth weren’t enough to keep their marriage together. Hollywood’s “It” couple are over --- and now Lizzie is going to tell her side of the story. Celebrity ghostwriter Hilary Liftin chronicles the tabloids’ favorite marriage as Lizzie Pepper realizes that, when the curtain falls, her romance isn’t what she and everyone else thought.

Each of the characters in SPEAK is attempting to communicate across gaps --- to estranged spouses, lost friends, future readers, or a computer program that may or may not understand them. Louisa Hall explores how the chasm between computer and human --- shrinking rapidly with today’s technological advances --- echoes the gaps that exist between ordinary people. Though each speaks from a distinct place and moment in time, all five characters share the need to express themselves while simultaneously wondering if they will ever be heard or understood.

Eighteen-year-old Ada Concannon has just been hired by the respected but eccentric Dickinson family of Amherst, Massachusetts. Despite their difference in age and the upstairs-downstairs divide, Ada strikes up a deep friendship with Miss Emily, the gifted elder daughter living a spinster’s life at home. But Emily’s passion for words begins to dominate her life. When Ada’s safety and reputation are threatened, however, Emily must face down her own demons in order to help her friend --- with shocking consequences.

In a war-torn village in Eastern Europe, an American photographer captures a young girl flying toward the lens, fleeing a fiery explosion that has engulfed her home and family. The image becomes the subject of obsession for one writer, the photographer’s best friend, who has suffered a devastating tragedy of her own. As the writer plunges into a suicidal depression, her filmmaker husband enlists several friends to save her by rescuing the unknown girl and bringing her to the US. Yet, as their plot unfolds, everything we know about the story comes into question.

Hannah Martin has lived in six different cities and held countless meaningless jobs since graduating college. On the heels of leaving yet another city, Hannah moves back to her hometown of Los Angeles. She goes out to a bar one night with her best friend, Gabby, and meets up with her high school boyfriend, Ethan. Just after midnight, Gabby asks Hannah if she’s ready to go. A moment later, Ethan offers to give her a ride later if she wants to stay. What happens if she leaves with Gabby? What happens if she leaves with Ethan? In concurrent storylines, Hannah lives out the effects of each decision.

Among the buildings consumed by a devastating mudslide in North Carolina was a top-secret government research facility, and Ryder Creed has been hired to find what’s left of it. Then rescuers recover the body of a scientist from the facility who was obviously dead before the landslide. The FBI sends Agent Maggie O’Dell to investigate, and she and Creed are soon caught in a web of lies, secrets and murder that may involve not only the government facility, but decades-old medical experiments that are the subject of current congressional hearings.

When Callie McBride finds a woman’s phone number written on a scrap of paper her husband has thrown away, she thinks that her marriage is over. Callie flees to Nevada and her Aunt Nash’s Tamarosa Ranch, where she is shocked to see that the place of so many happy childhood memories is in disrepair. Once Callie pulls back the curtain on Tamarosa’s heyday --- the 1940s and ’50s, when high-society and Hollywood women ventured to the ranch for quickie divorces and found a unique sisterhood --- she uncovers a secret promise Nash made to her true love.

Tara lives in an impeccably restored Russian Hill mansion in San Francisco. Once a widow, twice divorced, she’s a woman with a past she prefers keeping to herself. Enter Cavin Lattimore, the surgeon assigned to Tara following a ski accident in Lake Tahoe. In the weeks it takes her to recover, Cavin sweeps her off her feet and their relationship blossoms into something Tara had never imagined possible. But then she begins to notice some strange things. However perfect Tara’s life appears, things are starting to get messy.

Josephine Buck runs a trading post just off the Navajo Reservation. Widow Leigh Ann Vance is Jo's right-hand woman, filling the emptiness in her own life. Shortly after her husband, Kurt, was killed, Leigh Ann discovered he had been having a string of affairs. Leigh Ann's trust issues affect her feelings for blind sculptor Melvin Littlewater. Kurt's business partners accuse Leigh Ann of helping Kurt embezzle, and the police wonder if Leigh Ann killed him. When she turns to Melvin for help, she finds him fighting his own demons, haunted by memories of a young girl he saw moments before the car crash that cost him his sight.