Adult

It starts with an itch. In homes across the country, women ages eighteen to 35 begin to slow down. Tired. Blank. Restless. Drawn to the Pacific Ocean like it’s calling them home. They abandon their lives --- jobs, families, their very selves. And once they reach the West, they vanish forever. At the center of the story are three young women caught in the pull of something unstoppable. Aimee follows the trail of her missing best friend to a man called the Piper --- known for leading infected women West. Teenie, afflicted and unraveling, clings to a single memory as she looks out the window of the Piper’s van. And Eve, a former journalist, is chasing the story that might just consume her.

Young folk singer Elle Harlow reaches the height of her prowess in 1973, with two wildly beloved albums to her name and a hidden history of impossible heartbreak. When she sets foot on the famed Grand Ole Opry stage, Elle gives the biggest performance of her life. Then, to the dismay of shocked fans, her producer, and the man who still loves her, she vanishes. Almost two decades later, 18-year-old Marijohn Shaw is spending her summer pumping gas, writing songs on her broken mandolin, and longing for a mother. Her father, Abe, has always sworn he was the last person to see Elle Harlow alive, but when a meteor strikes the woods of their sleepy Pennsylvania town and a piece of Elle’s past emerges from the wreckage, the truth of her disappearance sets fire to everything Marijohn believes about herself, her music, and her ability to love with abandon.

Mathaiik has trained all his life to join the sacred order of the Idallik Knights, charged with defending their world from the forces of necromancy. Only vestiges of that cursed magic remain, nothing like the fabled days of the Grim Lords, the undead wizards who once nearly destroyed the world. But when an even stranger kind of monster begins to wake, the Knights quickly prove powerless to stop them. It’s a good thing, then, that the Grim Lords were never truly destroyed. One of their number sleeps below the Knights' very fortress. And when an army of twisted tree monsters attacks the young initiates in his charge, Math decides to do the unthinkable: he wakes her up. Because said necromancer, Kaiataris, knows something history has forgotten. And if she and Math can’t find a new way to balance the scales, this won't just be the end of the world as they know it, but the end of all life, everywhere.

Retail worker Emmett Truesdale has never fit the Southern California mold of six-pack, suntanned masculinity. Over 300 pounds, he carries the weight of his childhood trauma and millennial ennui around his waist and in his soul. Desperate for help, he enrolls in a clinical trial for a new weight loss product called Obexity. The treatment is as horrifying as the results are miraculous and as Emmett sheds pounds at superhuman speed, every part of his life improves overnight. Unfortunately, Obexity comes with some killer side effects, including lost stretches of time and overwhelming cravings. Worse, people who were cruel to him have started disappearing and when the police warn of a cannibalistic killer on the loose, he fears that Obexity is turning him into a monster. But how can he give it up now that people are finally starting to treat him like he’s human?

Celebrated as “his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” (Los Angeles Times), Colm Tóibín is a master of short fiction as well as the novel, able to summon an extraordinary intensity of emotion in a brief tale. The 11 stories transport readers across continents and eras. Tóibín’s stories are rich with the complexities of family dynamics, the haunting pull of the past, and the quiet revelations that define our lives. His characters, whether navigating the aftermath of war, or forbidden love, or the desires of a girl in Catalan, or the quiet struggles mundane life, are rendered with illuminating, unforgettable empathy and insight.

Meet Sam, an adjunct professor at a public university in Baltimore who takes a last-minute gig at the private liberal arts college down the road. Overworked and underpaid, her life is a blur of back-to-back classes, side hustles and job applications as she attempts to claw her way toward a full-time position. But her already precarious existence is thrown into disarray when she runs into her former grad school adviser, Dr. Tom Sternberg, on campus. Tom and Sam have a complicated history, the lasting impact of which has haunted her academic career. Then she learns that Tom left his old job for undisclosed reasons --- and his long-awaited second novel is about a professor’s reckoning with his checkered past. As whispers spread that Sam is the inspiration behind a central character, she fights to regain control of the story while questioning everything she thought she knew about her future --- and herself.

Erica and Laure meet on the steps of the Sacré-Coeur in Paris, 1978. Erica is a student, relishing her first summer abroad before beginning university at home in England. Laure is studying for her PhD at the Sorbonne, drinking and smoking far too much, and sleeping with a married woman. The moment the two women meet, the spark is undeniable, but their encounter turns into far more than a summer of love. It is the beginning of a relationship that will define their lives and every decision they have yet to make ... Erica and Laure’s love story spans decades, marriage, children, secret trysts and the agonizing changes --- both personal and political --- that might mean they can be together, after all. But when life brings them within touching distance again, will they be brave enough to seize a future together?

Social media influencer Elly Parker had the perfect life --- until she discovered her husband had been having an affair with her best friend. But as hurt, betrayed, unmoored as Elly is, she has made it her mission to help others in need. Even strangers. When Elly meets a man on the steps to the subway platform, crutches in one hand and a yellow suitcase by his feet, she can’t help but feel sorry for him. Just as he planned. This small act of kindness sets off a change of events more terrifying than anything she ever could imagine. To survive, Elly will need to convince the world what happened to her was real. She needs a lawyer who can bend the rules to find the truth. Eddie Flynn and his team must find the stranger with the yellow suitcase. But little do they know this cunning killer is a master manipulator and is always one step ahead.

It's 11:59. And the city that never sleeps is afraid to get out of bed. A bomb explodes in a crowded New York subway station at exactly 11:59am. The next day, a second blast rips through a busy department store --- again at 11:59.  As the bombs go off with clockwork precision, the death toll climbs and businesses shut their doors as the city hunkers down in fear. NYPD Red Detectives Kylie MacDonald and Zach Jordan face their most twisted case ever, as they race against the clock in search of one man who has vowed "to destroy New York City the way it destroyed my family."

Hot on the heels of an art forger, a member of the Lockwood Antique Hunter’s Agency disappears while investigating an isolated castle deep in Scottish countryside. Freya and Aunt Carole race to her last known location and arrive in the wintry, snow-covered Scottish Borders. At the castle, they discover that a murdered laird in the vegetable garden and his priceless collection of silverware has been stolen. Local police believe Freya’s missing team member was involved with the robbery and murder...but where is she now? As a snowstorm descends on the castle, Freya and Carole call in back-up to help uncover what happened that fateful night. As each question is met with more mystery, the clock is ticking to find their friend and the murderer before they are cut off from the outside world.