Adult

Over the last 40 years, Stuart Woods has written more than 90 novels of suspense and intrigue. What many readers don’t know is that his very own life was filled with similar stories of adventure. Born in Georgia, Woods worked in advertising in New York, served in the US Air Force, and had a short stint as an advance man. At the age of 37, he found himself in a transatlantic sailing race and pursued writing as a full-time career shortly thereafter. Along the way, Woods has lived all over the world, from New York to London, Santa Fe to Ireland. Incorporating his iconic sailing memoir BLUE WATER, GREEN SKIPPER, this is the story of a life well-lived and a special inside look into the beloved author’s many exploits.

When the leader of North Korea is catastrophically injured, his incapacitation inadvertently triggers a “dead-man’s switch,” activating an army of sleeper agents in South Korea and precipitating a struggle for succession. Jack Ryan, Jr. is in Seoul to interview a potential addition to the Campus. But his benign trip takes a deadly turn when a wave of violence perpetrated by North Korean operatives grips South Korea’s capital. A mysterious voice from North Korea offers Jack a way to stop the peninsula’s rush to war, but her price may be more than he can afford to pay.

Dr. Laina Landers is good at her job. She’s an accomplished therapist, dedicated and compassionate. When she is summoned by a panicked patient who is being held hostage by her husband, she intervenes and dissuades him. Laina becomes a media sensation. But as her star rises, a target is placed on her back. Not everyone is impressed by Laina’s achievements. Someone has it in for her and is targeting what matters to her most: her patients. One by one, Laina’s patients spiral after they receive unsettling gifts that mock their deepest fears and hidden traumas. Liana’s own home is targeted, in a mysterious break-in where nothing is taken, but left behind is the same message sent to her patients: Watching you.

Smarting from her recently canceled wedding and about to turn 40, Laurie Sassalyn returns to her Maine hometown of Calcasset to handle the estate of her great-aunt Dot, a spirited adventurer who lived to be 93. Alongside boxes of Polaroids and pottery, a mysterious wooden duck shows up at the bottom of a cedar chest. Laurie’s curiosity is piqued, especially after she finds a love letter to the never-married Dot that ends with the line “And anyway, if you’re ever desperate, there are always ducks, darling.” Laurie is told that the duck has no financial value. But after it disappears under suspicious circumstances, she feels compelled to figure out why anyone would steal a wooden duck --- and why Dot kept it hidden away in the first place.

Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion.

Allison Brody is 32 and newly arrived on the East Coast after just managing to flee her movie producer boyfriend. She has some money, saved up from years of writing and waitressing, so she buys a small house on the beach. But then a Category 3 hurricane makes landfall and scatters her home up and down the shore, leaving Allison adrift. Should she go home from the bar with the strange cameraman and stay in his guest room? Is that a glass vase he smashed on her skull? Can she wipe the blood from her eyes, get in her car and drive to her mother’s? Does she really love the brain surgeon who saved her, or is she just using him for his swimming pool? And is it possible to ever truly heal without seeking some measure of revenge?

Looming high above the cliffside along a remote coastline, Ondstrand House is the headquarters of the shadowy biotech firm Ondstrand Biologic. When the body of the organization’s most gifted young scientist, Allegra Stans, is discovered in a walk-in refrigerator, Agent Myles is called in to investigate. Myles works for Standard Division, the most feared element of a vast state security apparatus, and he’s been dispatched to the brooding manor. As his investigation proceeds, Myles discovers that “gifted scientist” is only one thread in the complicated fabric of Allegra’s life. There are darker strands as well, all woven into a pattern of secrets, each presenting a reasonable motive for murder.

Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent and to keep the nine-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed. One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. Her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department.

Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress, has retreated to her family’s lake house in Vermont. She passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple living in the house across the lake. One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other --- and the longer Casey watches --- it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage isn’t as perfect as it appears. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey immediately suspects Tom of foul play. What she doesn’t realize is that there’s more to the story than meets the eye --- and that shocking secrets can lurk beneath the most placid of surfaces.

Elise King is a successful and ambitious detective --- or she was before a medical leave left her unsure if she'd ever return to work. She now spends most days watching the growing tensions in her small seaside town of Ebbing --- the weekenders renovating old bungalows into luxury homes, and the locals resentful of the changes. The conflicts boil over when a newcomer wants to put the town on the map with a weekend music festival, and two teenagers overdose on drugs. When a man disappears the first night of the festival, Elise starts digging for answers. Ebbing is a small town, but it's full of secrets and hidden connections that run deeper and darker than Elise ever could have imagined.