Adult

How can Anna Ellis, a geeky, brilliant and hopelessly smitten cosmetic chemist, possibly win over Craig Kimball, the man of her dreams --- who also happens to be her boss? The answer is Craig’s empathetic (and handsome) CEO half-brother, Marco. The makeup mogul knows Craig for the ridiculously competitive rival he is. Whatever Marco has, Craig wants. That can be Anna, if she’s game to play. All Anna and Marco have to do is pretend they’re falling in love and let the rumors begin. If the experiment in attraction works, a jealous Craig will swoop in and give Anna her happily ever after --- if it weren’t for one hitch in the plan. There’s more to Marco than meets the eye. With every fake date, Anna’s feelings are starting to become dizzyingly real.

Kate Hibbert is all too eager to lend a hand to her neighbors. Although she has been a resident of the sleepy village of Lochdubh for only a year, in that time Kate has alienated one too many of its residents with her interfering --- and not entirely well-intentioned --- ways. When Kate’s neighbor sees her lugging a heavy suitcase to the bus stop, he hopes that the prying woman is leaving for good. But two weeks later, Kate’s cousin arrives in town with the news that Kate has gone missing --- and she demands that the local police step in. Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is called in to investigate the disappearance, and soon he is befuddled by a storm of lies, intrigue and scandal…and the sneaking suspicion that Kate was someone much more sinister than she claimed.

Restless and uncertain of her future in the wake of World War I, former battlefield nurse Bess Crawford agrees to travel to Yorkshire to help a friend of her cousin Melinda through surgery. But circumstances change suddenly when news of a terrible accident reaches them. Bess agrees to go to isolated Scarfdale and the Neville family, where one man has been killed and another gravely injured. The police are asking questions, and Bess is quickly drawn into the fray as two once close families take sides. When another tragedy strikes, the police are ready to make an arrest. What dark truth is behind these deaths? And what about the tale of an older murder --- one that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Nevilles?

The Chalet des Anglais should be the ideal locale for recently widowed Oxford don Emily to begin cutting through the fog of her grief. The rustic chalet nestled at the foot of the verdant, snow-topped Alps should afford Emily both time and space to heal. Joining her will be a collection of friends from the university, as well as other fellows, graduates and undergraduates. Something feels off, though, heightening Emily’s existing grief-induced anxiety. Her friends and colleagues are behaving oddly, and as hostilities grow, she begins to wonder if the chalet’s dark history has cast a shadow over the retreat. When a student disappears, Emily realizes that she’d better separate friend from foe, and real from imagined --- or the next disappearance may be her own.

It is 1990 when Melvina Donleavy arrives in Soviet Belarus on her first undercover mission with the CIA. To the prying eyes of the KGB, she is merely a secretary; to her CIA minders, she is the only one who can stop the flow of nuclear weapons from the crumbling Soviet Union into the Middle East. For Mel has a secret: she is a “super recognizer,” someone who never forgets a face. But no training could prepare her for the reality of life undercover, and for the streets of Minsk, where women have been disappearing. Soviet law enforcement is firm: murder is a capitalist disease. But could a serial killer be at work? As Mel searches for answers, she catches the eye of an entirely different kind of threat: the elusive and petrifying “Black Wolf,” head of the KGB.

The people closest to you can be your most dangerous enemies in this heart-pounding collection of three brand-new thrillers from the master of suspense. A CIA-agent bride is on her European honeymoon when she and her husband are poisoned --- leaving her 72 hours to take revenge (with Duane Swierczynski). When a deal goes bad on a tech executive in Washington, DC, he turns an order to kill his family into a chance to relive his military glory days (with Bill Schweigart). A Los Angeles doctor trusts her two housekeepers, but when she’s murdered in a botched attempt to steal drugs, the pair of grifters vie to control their former employer’s estate --- facing off against the Russian mob (with Julie Margaret Hogben).

Leyla, a Turkish twenty-something living in Berlin, is scrubbing toilets at an Alice in Wonderland-themed hostel after failing her thesis, losing her student visa and suing her German university in a Kafkaesque attempt to reverse her failure. She attempts to find solace in the techno beats of Berlin’s nightlife but with little success. Right as the clock winds down on the hold on her visa, Leyla meets a conservative Swedish tourist and --- against her political convictions and better judgment --- begins to fall in love, or something like it. Will she accept an IKEA life with the Volvo salesman and relinquish her creative dreams, or return to Turkey to her mother and sister, codependent and enmeshed, her father’s ghost still haunting their lives?

Jeff Guinn has penned the definitive account of the disastrous siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. For the first time in 30 years, more than a dozen former ATF agents who participated in the initial February 28, 1993, raid speak on the record about the poor decisions of their commanders that led to this deadly confrontation. Revelations in this book include why the FBI chose to end the siege with the use of CS gas; how both ATF and FBI officials tried and failed to cover up their agencies’ mistakes; where David Koresh plagiarized his infamous prophecies; and direct links between the Branch Davidian tragedy and the modern militia movement in America. Notorious conspiracist Alex Jones is a part of the Waco story. So much is new, and stunning.

Forty years ago, Steven “Smithy” Smith found a copy of a famous children’s book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. When he showed it to his remedial English teacher, Miss Iles, she believed that it was part of a secret code that ran through all of Twyford’s novels. And when she disappeared on a class field trip, Smithy became convinced that she had been right. Now, out of prison after a long stretch, Smithy decides to investigate the mystery that has haunted him for decades. But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn’t just a writer of forgotten children’s stories. The Twyford Code holds a great secret, and Smithy may just have the key.

Two Colombian expats meet as strangers on the rainy streets of New York City, both burdened with traumatic pasts. In Cuba, a woman discovers that her deceased brother’s bones have been stolen, and the love of her life returns from Ecuador for a one-night visit. A cash-strapped couple hustles in Miami, to life-altering ends. THE FARAWAY WORLD is a collection of arresting stories from the New York Times bestselling author of INFINITE COUNTRY, Patricia Engel. Intimate and panoramic, these stories bring to life the liminality of regret, the vibrancy of community, and the epic deeds and quiet moments of love.