Adult

It’s early morning in the small Texas town of Edenberg when the body of 65-year-old Beverly Hoffman is discovered in the Guadalupe River. After elementary school teacher Nichole Miller discovers the woman's body, she makes two phone calls: first to the police, who call Beverly's death a slip and fall, and second to her best friend, journalist Jenny Martin, who knows foul play when she sees it. The two women enlist the help of Beverly’s daughter-in-law, Robin, who’s eager to expose the truth. Beverly had been beloved in the tight-knit community, having cofounded the wildly popular personal-development company Genetive, Inc., alongside her influential husband. But something sinister has been smoldering beneath the surface of their picturesque hometown. And Genetive is at the center of it all.

Rosie and Chad Lowan are barely making ends meet in New York City when they receive life-changing news: Chad’s late uncle has left them his luxury apartment at the historic Windermere in glamorous Murray Hill. With its prewar elegance and impeccably uniformed doorman, the Windermere is the epitome of old New York charm. At first, the building and its eclectic tenants couldn’t feel more welcoming. But as the Lowans settle into their new home, Rosie starts to suspect that there’s more to the Windermere than meets the eye. Why is the doorman ever-present? Why are there cameras everywhere? And why have so many gruesome crimes occurred there throughout the years? When one of the neighbors turns up dead, Rosie must get to the truth about the Windermere before she, too, falls under its dangerous spell.

Lulu has always been taught that money is the ticket to a good life. So when Shanghai’s most eligible bachelor surprises her with a proposal, the only acceptable answer is yes, even if the voice inside her head is saying no. His family’s fortune would solve all her parents’ financial woes, but Lulu isn’t in love or ready for marriage. The only people she can confide in are her two best friends: Rina, who is tired of being passed over for promotion while her male colleagues are rewarded; and Jane, a sharp-tongued, luxury-chasing housewife desperate to divorce her husband and trade up. Each of them desires something different: freedom, time, beauty. None of them can get it without money. Lulu’s wedding is their golden opportunity. The social event of the season, it means more than enough cash gifts to transform the women’s lives.

It is said that the Panama Canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. Ada Bunting is a bold 16-year-old from Barbados who arrives in Panama as a stowaway alongside thousands of other West Indians seeking work. When she sees Omar, who has collapsed after a grueling shift, she is the only one who rushes to his aid. John Oswald has dedicated his life to scientific research and has journeyed to Panama with the goal of eliminating malaria. But his wife, Marian, has fallen ill herself, and when he witnesses Ada’s bravery and compassion, he hires her on the spot as a caregiver. This fateful decision sets in motion a sweeping tale of ambition, loyalty and sacrifice.

In an isolated lighthouse on the California coast, Rowan Winterbourne lives a solitary life with only her secrets for company. For she has a mission that drives her --- to avenge herself against Gregory Torval, the powerful drug and arms dealer who murdered her mother and vowed to eliminate everyone in her family. Then Joe Grantham arrives at her door, and for the first time Rowan lets her guard down --- a dangerous mistake when he blackmails her to go with him to Torval's private island. There Torval’s decadent birthday celebration rages, and while Joe pursues his own agenda, she’ll provide the perfect distraction. On Raptor Island, Torval’s will is law, and Joe, the closest she has to an ally, is an enigma she can’t trust. One false move, one careless word, and Rowan will die.

In a daring, brutal act of terrorism, an explosion rocks and topples the Statue of Liberty. Special Agent Michael Walker of the National Park Service is sent to New York as the agent-in-charge. Gina Delgado of the FBI has been placed in charge of the investigation as the lead of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and threats of a second terrorism attack are already being called into the media. While barred from the meetings of the Joint Task Force for his lack of security clearance, Walker finds a young boy among the survivors with a critical piece of information --- a video linking the attackers to the assault. As a radical domestic terrorist group threatens further attacks against America's cultural symbols, powerful forces within the government are misleading the investigation to further their own radical agenda.

On a cold November night, a farmhouse burns to the ground. Inside a young woman is found dead --- not from the fire but murdered. To the people in the rural community of Marbäck, this becomes a reference point: a before and after. For 10-year-old Isak Nyqvist, it sets in motion something he cannot control, igniting his future into an unpredictable inferno. The police focus their attention on Edvard Christensson, the boyfriend of the murdered woman and Isak’s beloved uncle. After a quick investigation, Edvard is found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Vidar Jörgensson, the rookie officer who first responded to the fire, prides himself on helping solved the murder. Little does he know this will drive him to the brink of professional and personal disaster --- and link his fate to young Isak's.

Ben Franklin lingers in our lives and in our imaginations. One of only two non-presidents to appear on US currency, Franklin was a founder, statesman, scientist, inventor, diplomat, publisher, humorist and philosopher. He believed in the American experiment, but Ben Franklin’s greatest experiment was…Ben Franklin. In that spirit of betterment, Eric Weiner embarks on an ambitious quest to live the way Ben lived. Not a conventional biography, BEN & ME is a guide to living and thinking well, as Ben Franklin did. It is also about curiosity, diligence and, most of all, the elusive goal of self-improvement. As Weiner follows Franklin from Philadelphia to Paris, Boston to London, he attempts to uncover Ben’s life lessons, large and small.

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Luckily, on the first day of school, Ellie meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, they play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.” But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls’ high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.