Adult

On February 3, 1889, just two days shy of her 41st birthday, Myra Maybelle Shirley --- better known at that point by her outlaw sobriquet “Belle Starr” --- was blown from her horse saddle and killed by a pair of shotgun blasts, delivered by an unseen assailant, only a few miles away from her home in the Indian Territory of present-day Oklahoma. Thus ended the life of one of the most colorful, authentic and dangerous women in the history of the American West. In QUEEN OF ALL MAYHEM, Dane Huckelbridge probes a life rich in contradictions and intrigue. Why did a woman who had considerable advantages in life --- a good family, a decent education, solid marriage prospects, a clear path to financial security --- choose to pursue a life of crime?

Ever since she was a child, Cléo, the French-American daughter of two academics, has had only one obsession: becoming a famous singer. Over the years, she overcomes every obstacle and becomes a global superstar. But as any celebrity will tell you, getting to the top is one thing; staying there is another. Now 33 years old, Cléo is taking her first real vacation in years, on a remote island with no one else in sight. With the never-ending spin cycle of her life finally on pause and no paparazzi peeking out from behind the coconut palms, she can work on her fourth album in peace. Except that with so much time to think, she can’t help but ruminate on her past --- including how, just six months earlier, things started to go very, very wrong.

Freelancing for a London publisher, editor Susan Ryeland has been given the last job she wants: working on an Atticus Pünd continuation novel called Pünd’s Last Case. Worse still, she knows the new writer. Eliot Crace is the troubled grandson of legendary children’s author Miriam Crace, who died 20 years ago. Eliot is convinced that she was poisoned. To her surprise, Susan enjoys reading the manuscript, which is set in the South of France and revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont, days before she was about to change her will. But when it is revealed that Lady Margaret was also poisoned, alarm bells begin to ring. The more Susan reads, the clearer it becomes that Eliot has deliberately concealed clues about his grandmother’s death inside the book.

Ever since her dad left them 20 years ago, it’s been just Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While it’s a bit lonely and a less exciting life than what she imagined for herself, it’s mostly okay. Then one day, Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she’s his half-sister. Reuben, who was left behind by their dad 30 years ago, has hired a detective to track down their father and a string of other half-siblings. And he wants Madeline to leave her home and join him for the craziest kind of road trip imaginable to find them all. As Madeline and Reuben --- and eventually the others --- share stories of their father, who behaved so differently in each life he created, they begin to question what he was looking for with every new incarnation.

Nineteen-year-old Zippy is the newest and youngest salesgirl at I. Magnin, “San Francisco’s Finest Department Store.” For a girl who grew up in a one-bedroom apartment above a liquor store with her mother and her mother’s madcap boyfriend, Howard, and who wanted to go to college but had no help in figuring out how, I. Magnin represents a real chance for a better and more elegant life. Or, at the very least, a more interesting one. Zippy may not be in school, but she’s about to get an education that will stick with her for decades. However, just when she thinks she’s getting a handle on how to be an adult woman in 1985, two surprises threaten both her sense of self and her coveted position at I. Magnin.

Grief-stricken over her mother’s death and bruised by her failure on her most recent case, Special Agent Emmeline Helliwell with the National Park Service returns to her Utah hometown to heal and regroup. She’s determined to turn in her badge and take over her mother’s bakery for a much quieter life…until the body of a childhood friend turns up in The Narrows of Zion National Park. The case is too personal for Emme to turn down, but the seemingly simple investigation turns treacherous as clues that connect to her previous case grow too glaring to ignore. When bodies start to pile up, Emme must track down the killer before they take more lives, venturing deep into Zion National Park to uncover the sordid secrets hiding beneath its stunning beauty.

After her husband’s unexpected death 18 months ago, Kausar Khan never thought she’d receive another phone call as heartbreaking --- until her thirty-something daughter, Sana, phones to say that she's been arrested for killing the unpopular landlord of her clothing boutique. Determined to help her child, Kausar heads to Toronto for the first time in nearly 20 years. Returning to the Golden Crescent suburb where she raised her children and where her daughter still lives, Kausar finds that the thriving neighborhood she remembered has changed. The murder of Sana’s landlord is only the latest in a wave of local crimes that have gone unsolved. With the help of some old friends and her plucky teenage granddaughter, Kausar digs into the investigation to uncover the truth.

In school, Milly Beckett and Nicole Raven were as close as sisters. Now, years later, a gulf separates them. Nicole is a global superstar, but when scandal breaks, she turns to the only person she trusts. Fresh from a painful divorce, Milly is tempted to refuse her friend’s plea for help. Nicole wasn’t there for her when she needed her most, and that’s hard to forgive. But Nicole is desperate, and Milly agrees to give her the sanctuary she needs. Against a stunning Lake District backdrop, stilted small talk gradually gives way to soul-deep revelations as the two women slowly find their way back to one another. But Nicole can’t stay hidden forever --- and neither can the secret she’s been keeping from Milly, a secret that threatens both her future happiness and the fragile bond between them.

When Graydon Carter was offered the editorship of Vanity Fair in 1992, he knew he faced an uphill battle --- how to make the esteemed and long-established magazine his own. Not only was he confronted with a staff that he perceived to be loyal to the previous regime, he arrived only a few years after launching Spy magazine, which gloried in skewering the celebrated and powerful --- the very people Vanity Fair venerated. With curiosity, fearlessness, and a love of recent history and glamour that would come to define his storied career in magazines, Carter succeeded in endearing himself to his editors, contributors and readers, as well as many of the faces that would come to appear in Vanity Fair’s pages. WHEN THE GOING WAS GOOD is Carter’s lively recounting of how he made his mark as one of the most talented editors in the business.

After a childhood filled with heartbreak, Irene, a talented artist, finds herself in a small Central American village where she checks into a beautiful but decaying lakefront hotel called La Llorona at the base of a volcano. THE BIRD HOTEL tells the story of this young American who, after suffering tragedy, restores and runs La Llorona. Along the way, we meet a rich assortment of characters who live in the village or come to stay at the hotel. While the world that Joyce Maynard brings to life on the page is rendered from her imagination, it’s one informed by the more than 20 years of which she has spent a significant amount of her time in a small Mayan indigenous village in Guatemala.