Adult

Vivvy Bouchet was only 10 when she saved a boy’s life by making an impossible prediction. She doesn’t want to explain it. A wunderkind scientist, she just wants to be left in peace to scan the desert Texas sky with her telescopes in one of the darkest places on earth. But when the boy she saved, now a Fort Worth cop, begs for her help on a cold case, she can’t turn him down. In the past decade, Lizzie Solomon and the Victorian mansion where she disappeared have taken on almost mythic status. Conspiracy theorists feed the frenzy that Lizzie is still buried in the crumbling walls while her mother, who sits in prison convicted of killing her, loudly proclaims her innocence. When a vicious podcaster takes aim at Vivvy’s own secrets --- and those of the vanished girl --- Vivvy’s life unravels like the mysterious galaxies she chases.

What if you found yourself in the middle of a war armed only with lipstick and a sense of humor? Abandoned as a child in Los Angeles in 1931, Dust Bowl refugee Sally Brady convinces a Hollywood movie star to adopt her, and she grows up to be an effervescent gossip columnist secretly satirizing Europe’s upper crust. By 1940, saucy Sally is conquering Fascist-era Rome with cheek and charm. A good deed leaves Sally stranded in wartime Italy, brandishing a biting wit, a fake passport, and an elastic sense of right and wrong. To save her friends and find her way home through a land of besieged castles and villas, Sally must combat tragedy with comedy, tie up pompous bureaucrats in their own red tape, force the cruel to be kind, and unravel the mystery, weight and meaning of family.

Venice, 1717. Fifteen-year-old Luisa has only wanted one thing: to be the best at violin. As a student at the Ospedale della Pietà, she hopes to join the highest ranks of its illustrious girls’ orchestra and become a protégé of the great Antonio Vivaldi. Luisa is good at violin, but she is not the best. She has peers, but she does not have friends. Until Maddalena. After a scandal threatens her noble family’s reputation, Maddalena is sent to the Pietà to preserve her marriage prospects. When she meets Luisa, Maddalena feels the stirrings of a friendship unlike anything she has known. But Maddalena has a secret: she has hatched a dangerous plot to rescue her future her own way.

On a hilltop in Umbria sits Valetto. Once a thriving village, centuries of earthquakes, landslides and the lure of a better life have left it neglected. Only 10 residents remain, including the widows Serafino --- three eccentric sisters and their steely centenarian mother --- who live quietly in their medieval villa. Then their nephew and grandson, Hugh, returns. But someone else has arrived before him, laying claim to the cottage where Hugh spent his childhood summers. The captivating and no-nonsense Elisa Tomassi asserts that the family patriarch, Aldo Serafino, a resistance fighter whom her own family harbored, gave the cottage to them in gratitude. This revelation unravels a secret that has impacted Valetto across generations. Who will answer for the crimes of the past?

Bill Olsson, recently widowed, is desperate to provide for his daughter, Sally. Struggling to pay rent, he welcomes a lodger into their home: Karla, a law student and aspiring judge, who works as a housekeeper to make ends meet. Her clients are the Rytters, an incredibly wealthy couple who hide behind closed doors. The wife is ill and hasn’t left the house in months. The husband is controlling and obsessive. Is he just a worried husband, concerned for his wife’s health? Or is there something more sinister at play? As Bill’s situation becomes more dire, Karla is forced to make a difficult choice. And when the Rytters wind up dead, and Karla is pulled in for questioning, she’s made to defend some parts of her past she’d rather not revisit.

After her parents perish in a tragic accident, 23-year-old Cosima Saverio assumes leadership of her family’s haute couture Italian leather brand. She also must maintain the 400-year-old family palazzo in Venice and care for her younger siblings. Then she meets Olivier Bayard, the founder of France’s most successful ready-to-wear handbag company. Fifteen years after her parents’ deaths, Cosima has found a confidant. Now the business is financially stable and generating enough income for the Saverios to live comfortably. Then Cosima’s brother, Luca, loses a hefty sum at the casino, and his debt must be repaid with money or his life. Forced to bail him out, Cosima is given an impossible choice: list the palazzo, sell a third of the family business, or let Luca fend for himself.

One summer, Heidi Julavits sees her son silhouetted by the sun and notices he is at the threshold of what she calls “the end times of childhood.” When did this happen?, she asks herself. Who is my son becoming --- and what qualifies me to be his guide? The next four years feel like uncharted waters. Rape allegations rock the university campus where Julavits teaches, unleashing questions of justice and accountability. She begins to wonder how to prepare her son to be the best possible citizen of the world he’s about to enter. Looking back to her childhood in Maine, Julavits takes us on an intellectual navigation of the self. Throughout, she intertwines her internal analysis with a wide-ranging exploration of what it means to raise a child in a time full of contradictions and moral complexity.

Beatrice Steele has never fit the definition of a true lady, according to the strict code of conduct that reigns in Swampshire, her small English township. Nevertheless, she lives a perfectly agreeable life with her marriage-scheming mother, prankster father and two younger sisters --- beautiful Louisa and forgettable Mary. But she harbors a dark secret: She is obsessed with the true crime cases she reads about in the newspaper. Eligible bachelor Edmund Croaksworth is set to attend the approaching autumnal ball, and the Steele family hopes that Louisa will steal his heart. However, when Croaksworth drops dead in the middle of a minuet, the evening descends into a frenzy of panic, fear and betrayal as it becomes clear they are trapped with a killer.

Ess wakes up alone on a sailboat in the remote Pacific Northwest with no memory of who she is or how she got there. She finds a note, but it's more warning than comfort: Start over. Don't make yourself known. Don't look back. Ess must have answers. She sails over a turbulent ocean to a town hundreds of miles away that she hopes might offer insight. The chilling clues she uncovers point to a desperate attempt at erasing her former life. But why? And someone is watching her…someone who knows she must never learn her truth. In Ess' world, the earth is precariously balanced at a climate tipping point, and she is perched at the edge of a choice. Which life does she want? The one taken from her --- and the dangerous secret that was buried --- or the new one she can make for herself?

Kelly’s new life in Philadelphia has turned into a nightmare. The only bright spot is her newly rekindled friendship with her childhood friend, Sabrina --- now a glamorous bestselling author with a handsome, high-powered husband. When Sabrina and Nathan offer Kelly an escape hatch, volunteering the spare room of their remote Virginia mansion, she jumps at the chance to run away from her old life. There, Kelly secretly finds herself falling for both her enchanting hosts --- until one night, a wild and unexpected threesome leads the couple to open their marriage for her. At first, Kelly loves being part of this risqué new world. But when she discovers that the last woman they invited into their marriage is missing, she starts to wonder if they could be dangerous…and if she might be next.