Adult

Born into an aristocratic German Jewish family, Ernst Baerwald is a gifted linguist, talented musician and fearless idealist. When he’s recruited in 1900 to become a spy, his life becomes an extraordinary adventure spanning two continents, two world wars, and impossible choices that will haunt him forever. From Frankfurt to Milan to Tokyo, Ernst moves through a world of intrigue and passion. He battles Japan’s Yakuza while entertaining its royalty and hosts Europe’s most brilliant performers. He falls deeply in love…with two women. He witnesses the rise of fascism in both Japan and Germany. And when the forces of fascism in Japan meet the horrors of Hitler’s Germany, this German Jew faces an impossible choice: destroy the country he loves most or become complicit in unimaginable evil.

When Landon receives a letter from Rose --- the woman he once planned forever with --- he learns their love story is over. She’s undergone a radical memory-erasing treatment, leaving behind her grief, her past...and him. But Landon can't bear to lose the love of his life. If she fell for him once, couldn’t she fall for him again? Now living in Edinburgh, Rose's world is a blank canvas and she's dating someone new. When Landon reenters her life as a stranger, they become fast friends, their lives entwining once more. But what Rose doesn’t know is that this new friend carries the weight of everything they once shared: their firsts, their marriage, and the heartbreak they barely survived. And when she starts exhibiting strange symptoms, it becomes clear their history isn’t gone --- it’s just buried. And remembering could come at a devastating cost.

Gretchen Falk, a Park Avenue sophisticate born into great wealth and blessed with a storybook marriage, tried to convince her devoted husband, Richard, not to join his old college friends on an expedition to the imposing peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Frankie Callahan’s dream of artistic success is within reach, with her career-making exhibition at a celebrated New York gallery only weeks away. To mark this new beginning, she is going to climb Kilimanjaro, but she certainly didn’t count on meeting anyone like Richard Falk. By the time they descend, they have lost more than they ever could have imagined. Now, less than two weeks after their return to New York, Frankie’s East Village loft is a blood-soaked crime scene, and Richard has been charged with her murder.

It’s late October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis has just concluded. The Russkies blinked and pulled their ICBMs out of Cuba. Attorney General Robert Kennedy fears reprisals from seething commies. He orders a red probe and puts the LAPD on the job. Freddy Otash is injudiciously named the lead investigating officer. He’s a stone-cold criminal with police sanction and a harrowing dope habit. He homes in on a red-front trade union. There’s a murder on Halloween night. It may link to ex-VP and current gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon and two commie snuffs from eight years back. Freddy is overworked and overamped. He’s running the probe, and Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman --- Tricky Dick Nixon’s head goons --- have hired him to keep Nixon away from the smear-minded press.

Julia Pritzker loves her new life as a wife and mother in beautiful Tuscany --- except that she misses her best friend, Courtney, back in the States. One night, Julia calls Courtney and reaches her as she’s arriving at her grandmother’s farm in Pennsylvania. Then the unthinkable happens. A dreadful premonition overwhelms Julia as Courtney is entering the house. But it’s too late to stop Courtney, who makes a heartbreaking discovery. Her beloved grandmother has been murdered. Julia flies home the next morning to support Courtney in her grief. The local police believe the murder was a botched burglary, but the women suspect something much more sinister. They call in hotshot Philly lawyer Bennie Rosato, but events take a deadly turn, and Julia becomes the target of a murderous conspiracy.

After a shocking accident, Silas Tucker’s legendary football career is suddenly over. Humbled but never defeated, he returns to his backwoods hometown, Cross Rivers, North Carolina, where his father was murdered. He goes back to what’s left of his family and their small, struggling farm. He reunites with his best friend in the world --- Taylor McCarter Webb, who is now married. Then Silas is pulled into a deadly battle with the Southern Mafia who control drugs, trafficking and murder. As the suspense crescendos, Silas follows one rule for survival: you don’t ride these country roads alone, or in the dead of night.

When Lila Dixon gets a call that her mother has gone missing, she initially brushes it off. Mattie’s disappearances are a part of life, like earthquakes in their dusty California hometown. But this time the prime suspect is Lila’s larger-than-life father: the one-time baseball star, local hero and fatal charmer John “Dix” Dixon. Dix’s main accomplishment as a dad was finding new ways to disappoint his daughter, but even Lila knows he’s not behind this. And when they uncover a $250,000 deposit to Mattie’s bank account, and someone slips a threatening note under Lila’s motel door, they realize Mattie may be in real danger. Now they’re heading down a trail marked by unsavory Russian thugs, fat-cat farmers, and an unseen enemy who’s always a step ahead.

It's rare for a room to open up in London’s storied Columbia Mansions, and lonely Gwen is thrilled when her neighbor’s new subletter, Pixie, brings a friendly breath of fresh air to its stuffy halls. Their unexpected bond soon becomes the bright spot in Gwen’s quiet life. But Gwen can’t help noticing cracks beneath Pixie's cheerful surface --- especially when it comes to her questionable financial arrangement with her live-in landlord, Alec. As suspicions mount, Gwen’s protective instincts go into overdrive, triggering a dangerous chain of events no one is prepared for.

Cricket Dib, born on the American prairie, has no particular prospects or ambitions until, in grade school, he realizes he can draw. He soon meets a girl, Olympia Argyros, who is captivating and brilliant and far more worldly. Recognizing his talent, she convinces him to deface, with profound vulgarity, a popular playground. Under her direction, he does it willingly, already in love. Thus begins a 65-year entwining between Cricket and Olympia, encompassing friendship, working partnership and love affair. Together they go to art school --- an experience of dubious value --- and then navigate the art world for the next 50 years, together and apart.

Held at Fairmount Park, in Philadelphia, the Great Centennial Exhibition of 1876 attracted 10 million Americans and visitors from around the world. On display were inventions that signaled the changing landscape of American life, from the typewriter to the telephone to Heinz Tomato Ketchup. This celebration of America’s first century came at a moment when its future seemed more precarious than ever. Looming over the fair was the presidential race of 1876 --- a highly contested election that would determine the fate of Reconstruction and permanently shape the Republican party as we know it today. Fergus Bordewich animates these converging crises through the lives of four protagonists: Rutherford B. Hayes, Alexander Graham Bell, railroad magnate Tom Scott, and sculptor Edmonia Lewis.