Adult

Margaret Murphy is a weaver of fantastic tales, growing up in a world where the truth is too much for one little girl to endure. Her first memory is of the day her friend, Agnes, died. No one blames Margaret. Not in so many words. Margaret's mother insists to everyone who will listen that her daughter never even left the house that day. Left alone to make sense of tragedy, Margaret wills herself to forget these unbearable memories, replacing them with imagined stories full of faith and magic that always end happily. Enter Poor Deer: a strange and formidable creature who winds her way uninvited into Margaret’s made-up tales. Poor Deer will not rest until Margaret faces the truth about her past and atones for her role in Agnes’ death.

Desperate to escape the ghosts of his failed marriage, Cole leaves London behind for a remote stretch of coast, relishing the respite from the noise, drama and relentless careerism that curdled his relationship and mental health. Leonora has made the same move for similar reasons. She’s living a short walk from Cole’s seaside cottage, preparing for her latest art exhibition. The pair forges a connection on the eroding bluff they call home. Then two young women activists raising awareness about gendered violence disappear while passing through. Cole and Leonora find themselves in the middle of a police investigation and the resulting media firestorm when the world learns of what happened. They quickly realize that they don’t know each other that well after all.

Eli North is not okay. His drinking is getting worse by the day, his emotional wounds after a deployment to Afghanistan are as raw as ever, his marriage and career are over, and the only job he can hold down is with the local sheriff’s department. And that’s only because the sheriff is his mother --- and she’s overwhelmed with small town Shaky Lake’s dwindling budget and the fallout from the opioid epidemic. The Northwoods of Wisconsin may be a vacationer’s paradise, but amidst the fishing trips and campfires and Paul Bunyan festivals, something sinister is taking shape. When the body of a teenage boy is found in the lake, it sets in motion an investigation that leads Eli to a wealthy enclave with a violent past, a pharmaceutical salesman and a missing teenage girl.

For the last 10 years, the small, claustrophobic town of West Wilmer has been struggling to understand one thing: Why did it take young Grant Dean 27 minutes to call for help on the fateful night of the car accident that took the life of his beloved sister, Phoebe? Someone knows what really happened the night Phoebe died. Someone who is ready to tell the truth. With Phoebe's memorial in just three days, grief, delusion, ambition and regret tornado together with biting gossip in a town full of people obsessed with a long-gone tragedy with four people at its heart --- the caretaker, the secret girlfriend, the missing bad boy and a former football star. Just kids back then, they are forever tied together the fateful rainy night Phoebe died.

Dylan’s geologist friend, Clay, has discovered an untouched cliff face in the Kentucky wilderness, and she is going to be the first person to climb it. Together with Clay, his research assistant Sylvia, and Dylan’s boyfriend Luke, Dylan is going to document her achievement on Instagram and finally cement her place as the next rising star in rock climbing. Seven months later, three bodies are discovered in the trees just off the highway. All are in various states of decay: one a stark, white skeleton; the second emptied of its organs; and the third a mutilated corpse with the tongue, eyes, ears and fingers removed. But Dylan is still missing --- and no trace of her, dead or alive, has been discovered. Were the climbers murdered? Did they succumb to cannibalism? Or are their impossible bodies the work of an even more sinister force?

Helsinki, 1947. Finland teeters between the Soviet Union and the West. Everyone is being watched. A wrong look or a wrong word could end in catastrophe. Natalya Bobrova, from Russia, and Louise Koski, from the United States, are young wives of their country’s military attachés. When they meet at an embassy party, their husbands, world-class skiers Arnie and Mikhail, drunkenly challenge each other to a friendly --- but secret --- cross-country wilderness race. If news of the race gets out and Mikhail loses, Natalya knows it would mean his death, her imprisonment and the loss of her two children. Meanwhile, Louise, who is childless, uses the race as an opportunity to raise money for a local orphanage, naïve to the danger it will bring to Natalya and her family.

In segregated High Cotton, Texas, in 1964, the racial divide is as clear as the railroad tracks running through town. It’s also where two girls are going to shake things up. This is the last summer of 13-year-old Corky Corcoran’s childhood, and her family hires a Haitian housekeeper who brings her daughter, America, along with her. Corky is quick to befriend America and eager to share her favorite new “grown-up” novel, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. America’s take on it is different and profoundly personal. As their friendship grows, Corky finds out so much more about America’s life and her hidden skill: she can run as fast as Olympian Wilma Rudolph! When Corky asks America to play with her girls’ softball team for the annual church rivals game, it’s a move that crosses the color line and sets off a firestorm.

A wealthy businessman approaches Jack Morgan, head of Private --- the world's largest investigation agency --- with a desperate plea to track down his daughter and two grandchildren, who have disappeared without a trace. What at first seems to be a simple missing persons case soon escalates into something much more deadly, when Jack discovers the daughter is being pursued by highly trained operatives. As Jack uncovers more of the woman's backstory, the trail leads towards Afghanistan --- where Jack's career as a US Marine ended in catastrophe. Jack will need to face the trauma of his past to save a family's future.

When Daniel de La Luna arrives as a scholarship student at an elite East Coast university, he bears the weight of his family’s hopes and dreams, and the burden of sharing his late uncle’s name. Daniel flounders at first --- but then Sam, his roommate, changes everything. As their relationship evolves from brotherly banter to something more intimate, Daniel soon finds himself in love with a man who helps him see himself in a new light. But just as their relationship takes flight, Daniel is pulled away, first by Sam’s hesitation and then by a brutal turn of events that changes Daniel’s life forever. As he grapples with profound loss, Daniel finds himself in his family’s ancestral homeland in México for the summer, finding joy in this setting even as he struggles to come to terms with what’s happened and faces a host of new questions.

With news of her father’s passing, Pearline abruptly leaves her daughter and grandchildren behind in Brooklyn to return to her childhood home in Jamaica. But Pearline isn’t prepared for her father’s puzzling deathbed wish that she find her siblings --- whom she hasn’t seen in 60 years --- and discover the secret that tore her family apart. Moving through time and place, from Cuba to Montego Bay and from Brooklyn to Havana, THE HOUSE OF PLAIN TRUTH traces Pearline’s reconciliation of what she thought she knew about her family and the truth of their origin.