Adult

It’s 1927, and 18-year-old Mary Engle is hired to work as a secretary at a remote but scenic institution for mentally disabled women. She’s immediately in awe of her employer, Dr. Agnes Vogel, who runs one of the largest and most self-sufficient public asylums for women in the country. Mary deeply admires how dedicated the doctor is to the poor and vulnerable women under her care. Soon after she’s hired, Mary learns that a girl from her childhood orphanage, Lillian, is one of the inmates. When Lillian begs Mary to help her escape, alleging the asylum is not what it seems, Mary is faced with a terrible choice. Should she trust her troubled friend with whom she shares a dark childhood secret?

When a Navy vessel comes across a yacht in distress in the middle of the vast Indian Ocean, Captain Danial Tengku orders his ship to rush to its aid. On board the yacht is a British couple: a horribly injured man, Jake, and his traumatized wife, Virginie, who breathlessly confesses, “It’s all my fault. I killed them.” Trembling with fear, she reveals their shocking story to Danial, and it will be up to him to determine just how truthful she is. But when his crew makes a shocking discovery, Danial realizes that if he doesn’t act soon, they could all fall under the dark spell of the island.

Dr. Yungman Kwak is in the twilight of his life. Every day for the last 50 years, he has headed to Horse Breath’s General Hospital, where he treats the women and babies of the small rural Minnesota town he chose to call home. He immigrated from Korea after the Korean War, forced to leave his family, ancestors, village and all that he knew behind. But his life is built on a lie. And one day, a letter arrives that threatens to expose it. His life is thrown into chaos --- the hospital abruptly closes, his wife refuses to spend time with him, and his son is busy investing in a struggling health start-up. Yungman faces a choice --- he must choose to hide his secret from his family and friends, or confess and potentially lose all he’s built.

Novelist Aaron Holland Broussard is shattered when his daughter, Fannie Mae, dies suddenly. As he tries to honor her memory by saving two young men from a life of crime amid their opioid-ravaged community, he is drawn into a network of villainy that includes a violent former Klansman, a far-from-holy minister, a biker club posing as evangelicals, and a murderer who has been hiding in plain sight. Aaron’s only ally is state police officer Ruby Spotted Horse, a no-nonsense woman who harbors some powerful secrets in her cellar. Despite the air of mystery surrounding her, Ruby is the only one Aaron can trust. That is, until the ghost of Fannie Mae shows up, guiding her father through a tangled web of the present and past.

Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again. It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she never could have imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career. She’s even started dating the perfect guy, but their new relationship might be sabotaged before it has a chance by the overwhelming desire Feyi feels every time she locks eyes with the one person in the house who is most definitely off-limits --- his father.

Brian and Margot Dunne live year-round in Seaside with their daughters, Liz and Evy. The Dunnes run a real estate company, but their future becomes quite precarious when Brian develops a brain tumor. Amidst the chaos and new caretaking responsibilities, Liz still seeks out summer adventure and flirting with a guy she should know better than to pursue. Her younger sister, Evy, works in a candy shop, falls in love with her friend Olivia, and secretly adopts the persona of a middle-aged mom in an online support group, where she discovers her own mother’s most vulnerable confessions. Meanwhile, Margot faces an impossible choice driven by grief, impulse and the ways that small-town life in Seaside has shaped her.

A woman boards a plane in the African country of Burkina Faso having just completed a targeted assassination for the state of Israel. Two minutes later, her plane is blown out of the sky. Over 6,000 miles away, former Navy SEAL James Reece watches the names and pictures of the victims on cable news. One face triggers a distant memory of a Mossad operative attached to the CIA years earlier in Iraq --- a woman with ties to the intelligence services of two nations, a woman Reece thought he would never see again. Reece enlists friends new and old across the globe to track down her killer, unaware that he may be walking into a deadly trap.

Toni Morrison, born Chloe A Wofford, was a towering figure in the world of literature when she entered A.J. Verdelle’s life. Their literary friendship was a young writer’s dream --- simultaneously exhilarating, intimidating, fulfilling and challenging. Like many women friends, these two writers imagined and built a relationship that was responsive, inventive and engaged. MISS CHLOE powerfully situates the risks writers face and the freedom they find when they put Black women’s lives into words. Verdelle chronicles her grief at Morrison’s passing and finds comfort in Morrison’s astute advice --- wisdom Verdelle didn’t always recognize at the time.

In the Long Island oceanfront community of Mattauk, three different women discover that midlife changes bring a whole new type of empowerment. After Nessa James’ husband dies and her twin daughters leave for college, the former nurse begins to hear voices. It doesn’t take long for Nessa to realize that the voices calling out to her belong to the dead. On the cusp of 50, suave advertising director Harriett Osborne has just witnessed the implosion of her lucrative career and her marriage. But her life is far from over --- in fact, she has undergone a stunning and very welcome metamorphosis. Ambitious former executive Jo Levison has spent 30 long years at war with her body. The free-floating rage and hot flashes that arrive with the beginning of menopause feel like the very last straw --- until she realizes she has the ability to channel them.

Growing up the daughter of notorious treasure hunter and absentee father Duke Wilder left Lily without much patience for the profession…or much money in the bank. But Lily is nothing if not resourceful, and now she uses Duke’s coveted hand-drawn maps to guide tourists on fake treasure hunts through the red rock canyons of Utah. It pays the bills but doesn’t leave enough to fulfill her dream of buying back the beloved ranch her father sold years ago, and definitely not enough to deal with the sight of the man she once loved walking back into her life with a motley crew of friends ready to hit the trails.