Adult

In BIG RED, Jerome Charyn reimagines the life of one of America’s most enduring icons, “Gilda” herself, Rita Hayworth, whose fiery red tresses and hypnotic dancing graced the silver screen over 60 times in her nearly 40-year career. The quintessential movie star of the 1940s, Hayworth has long been objectified as a sex symbol, pin-up girl and so-called Love Goddess. Channeling the ghosts of a buried past, Charyn finally lifts the veils that have long enshrouded Hayworth, evoking her emotional complexity --- her passions, her pain and her inner turmoil.

Mike Hammer is on the case, this time hunting the murderer of his old friend and bootlegger-turned-legit-businessman, Packy Paragon. Already torn up by the disappearance of Velda, his beloved secretary, Hammer carves a brutal path for vengeance. Drinking heavily, his relationships fraying and his behavior self-destructive, he has to track down Paragon's secret ledger, with the names of every corrupt official in town. With deception everywhere, and a whole host of reasons to want the ledger, Hammer has to pull himself together and solve the case before all hell breaks loose.

Leigh Welles has not set foot on the island in years. But when she finds herself called home from life on the Scottish mainland by her father’s unexpected death, she is determined to forget the sorrows of the past and start fresh. Fellow islander Iain MacTavish, a RAF veteran with his eyes on the sky and his head in the past, is also in desperate need of a new beginning. But this October, the sluagh are restless. The ominous, birdlike creatures of Celtic legend --- whispered to carry the souls of the dead --- have haunted the islanders for decades, but in the war’s wake, there are more wandering souls and more sluagh. When a young man disappears, Leigh and Iain are thrown together to investigate the truth at the island’s dark heart and reveal hidden secrets of their own.

While in college in upstate New York, Shay Evans and her best friends met a captivating man who seduced them with a web of lies about the way the world works. By senior year, Shay and her friend, Laurel, were the only ones who managed to escape. But when she hears the horrifying news of Laurel's death eight years later --- delivered by her favorite true-crime podcast crusader --- she begins to suspect that the past she thought she buried is still very much alive. Recruiting the help of the podcast host, Shay goes back to the place she vowed never to return to in search of answers. As she follows the threads of her friend's life, she's pulled into a dark, seductive world, where wealth and privilege shield brutal philosophies that feel all too familiar.

Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque police force. She’s been hiding a secret: she sees the ghosts of crime victims who point her toward the clues that other investigators overlook. As a lone portal back to the living for traumatized spirits, Rita is terrorized by nagging ghosts who won’t let her sleep and who sabotage her personal life. When she is sent to photograph the scene of a supposed suicide on a highway overpass, the furious, discombobulated ghost of the victim --- who insists she was murdered --- latches onto Rita, forcing her on a quest for revenge against her killers. Rita finds herself in the crosshairs of one of Albuquerque’s most dangerous cartels.

People have become one of the world’s most valuable commodities. Trafficked on the promise of a new life only to be hidden away as modern-day slaves. When Lena, a raped and badly beaten Syrian woman, literally falls into Lindsey Ryan’s life, she’s left with no choice but to find her part in this new war and play it as best she can. But before she can work out a safe plan to get Lena away from her very own hell at the hands of Patrick Adebayo, Lindsey hears of an unconscious child being smuggled into Patrick’s building just two doors up. Despite having Patrick’s unwanted attention, she has to help the child and get Lena to safety regardless of the cost. In doing so, she finds herself face to face with the worst of humanity.

Geneva Chase encounters a deceptive cast of suspects who pull her into a high-speed chase into the Whisper Room, a dating app for only the most elite members of society --- where affairs, blackmail and murder are all on the menu. When wealthy men crave no-strings-attached encounters, the Whisper Room promises to deliver. Escorts are turning up dead, and Geneva is ready to dive into the exclusive dating ring and catch the killer. But then one of the Whisper Room's escorts turns up murdered --- and she looks a lot like the blond in the blackmail video. The more Geneva digs, the more blackmail victims and potential suspects she finds --- and the more people she angers. Dangerous people, with links to organized crime and human trafficking. Will this story of a lifetime put a premature end to her own?

Acclaimed author Randall Silvis is looking for a story --- any story to follow up the series of gripping mystery novels that catapulted him to success. And then, out of nowhere, a story appears. A mysterious stranger named Thomas Kennaday tips Silvis off about a series of murders in a small Pennsylvania town, sending Silvis off on a tentative investigation in hopes of finding material for his next novel. What Silvis discovers is much more than a typical small-town murder case, and it soon becomes clear that Kennaday, who seems to have disappeared into thin air, is somehow pulling the strings of the investigation from behind the scenes.

When a German businesswoman in 1979 San Francisco hires ex-con PI Colleen Hayes to find a missing relative, supposedly in town to visit, she thinks it’s a simple job. But she soon discovers that the “nephew” is linked to an international vigilante group hunting down ex-Nazis. Then the body of a mysterious woman turns up on San Francisco’s Municipal Railway, mirroring a murder committed the week before in Buenos Aires where the “nephew” had just been. Colleen’s search uncovers a World War II banknote and the 1942 SS ID of a German officer long thought dead. When Colleen fails to heed warnings to stop her investigation, her pregnant daughter is attacked.

Discovering a body on her property presents Lady Abigail Worthing with more than one pressing problem. The victim is Juliet, the wife of her neighbor, Stapleton Henderson. Although Abigail has little connection with the lady in question, she expects to be under suspicion. Abigail’s skin color and her mother’s notorious past have earned her a certain reputation among the ton, and no amount of wealth or status will eclipse it. Abigail can’t divulge that she was attending a secret pro-abolition meeting at the time of the murder. To her surprise, Henderson offers her an alibi. Though he and Juliet were long estranged, and she had a string of lovers, he feels a certain loyalty to his late wife. Perhaps together, he and Abigail can learn the truth.