A mysterious electrical storm plunges Manhattan into darkness. As a strange, smothering fog rolls in, all communication crashes. In the blink of an eye, the island seems to vanish into a void. FBI Special Agent Jessica Blackwood and brilliant scientist Dr. Theo Cray know this isn’t a freak accident. It’s a sinister sleight of hand. Their greatest adversary, a serial killer and cultist known as the Warlock, has escaped during a prison transfer in New York. A depraved master of manipulation, he promised the end of days. He’s making good on it. One by one, cities across the globe are erupting in chaos as they disappear into the same black holes. But the voids are just a warm-up for something bigger.
When conflict photographer Jackson Swann dies, he leaves behind a conflict of his own making when his three daughters, each born to a different mother, discover that they’re now responsible for the family’s Oregon vineyard --- and for a family they didn’t ask for. As the sisters reluctantly gather at the vineyard, they’re soon enchanted by the Swann family matriarch and namesake of Maison de Madeleine wines, whose stories of bravery in WWII France and love for a wounded American soldier will reveal the family legacy they've each inherited and change the course of all their lives.
By turns reflective and visceral, the stories in HAO examine the ways in which women can be silenced as they grapple with sexism and racism, and how they find their own language to define their experience. In “Gold Mountain,” a young mother hides above a ransacked store during the San Francisco anti-Chinese riot of 1877. In “A Drawer,” an illiterate mother invents a language through drawing. And in “Stars,” a graduate student loses her ability to speak after a stroke.
Nick Anthony has retreated to the North Carolina mountains to mourn the untimely death of his wife. But when his estranged brother and sister-in-law die in a house fire, a stunned Nick learns he has a niece, Annalise, who is missing. At the scene of the crime, the men who set the fire have realized that Annalise, and the information they are looking for, got away. Feverish and exhausted, she stumbles onto her uncle's porch, throwing Nick into the middle of the mystery of her parents’ death and the dangerous criminals hunting her down. Hired to retrieve the stolen information at any price, private military contractor Cole and his team track Annalise to Nick’s cabin. But Nick has a hidden past of his own --- and more than a few deadly tricks up his sleeve.
Dev Deshpande has always believed in fairy tales. So it’s no wonder then that he’s spent his career crafting them on the long-running reality dating show “Ever After.” As the most successful producer in the franchise’s history, Dev always scripts the perfect love story for his contestants, even as his own love life crashes and burns. But then the show casts disgraced tech wunderkind Charlie Winshaw as its star. Charlie doesn’t believe in true love and only agreed to the show as a last-ditch effort to rehabilitate his image. As Dev fights to get Charlie to connect with the contestants on a whirlwind, worldwide tour, they begin to open up to each other, and Charlie realizes he has better chemistry with Dev than with any of his female co-stars.
Sidney O’Keefe just wants to spend a peaceful weekend alone with his wife and daughter in the vacation paradise of Lake Placid, New York --- now that he’s been paroled after a 10-year stretch in a maximum-security prison. But any illusion of a peaceful future is destroyed when his 11-year-old daughter, Chloe, suddenly disappears from the iconic beach scene, leaving Sidney and his wife, Penny, stricken with fear and panic. When it’s determined that his old crime boss, Mickey Rabuffo, might be behind the abduction, it becomes apparent that the past has not only come back to haunt Sidney, it has come back to kill the entire family.
Gates Foster lost his daughter, Lucy, 17 years ago. He's never stopped searching. Suddenly, a shocking new development provides Foster with his first major lead in over a decade, and he may finally be on the verge of discovering the awful truth. Meanwhile, Mitzi Ives has carved out a space among the Foley artists, creating the immersive sounds that give Hollywood films their authenticity. Using the same secret techniques as her father before her, she's become an industry-leading expert in the sound of violence and horror, creating screams so bone-chilling, they may as well be real. Soon Foster and Ives find themselves on a collision course that threatens to expose the violence hidden beneath Hollywood's glamorous façade.
Antiques appraiser Josie Prescott is approached by Veronica Sutton, who introduces herself as an old friend of Josie’s late father. She hands Josie a brown paper-wrapped package and leaves. Josie gasps when she sees what’s inside: a notecard bearing her name --- in her father’s handwriting --- and a green leather box. Inside the box are two letters in transparent plastic sleeves. The first bears the salutation, “My dear Cassandra”; the latter, “Dearest Fanny.” Both are signed “Jane Austen.” Could her father have really accidentally found two previously unknown letters by one of the world’s most beloved authors? Josie sets off on the quest of a lifetime to learn what Veronica knows about her father and to discover if the Jane Austen letters are real.
A popular young girl disappears without a trace, and her skeletal remains are discovered three years later. When the prime suspect isn’t indicted, he returns to mock the girl’s family. And this isn’t the first time he’s been suspected of the murder of a young girl; nearly 20 years ago, he was tried and released due to lack of evidence. Detective Chief Inspector Kusanagi worked both cases. The neighborhood in which the murdered girl lived is famous for an annual street festival. During the parade, the suspected killer dies unexpectedly. DCI Kusanagi turns once again to his college friend, Physics professor and occasional police consultant Manabu Yukawa --- known as Detective Galileo --- to help solve the string of impossible-to-prove murders.
As the one-year anniversary of her husband’s death approaches, Renu Amin is binge-watching soap operas and simmering with old resentments. She can’t stop wondering if, 35 years ago, she chose the wrong life. In Los Angeles, her son, Akash, has everything he ever wanted, but as he tries to kickstart his songwriting career and commit to his boyfriend, he is haunted by the painful memories he fled a decade ago. When his mother tells him she is selling the family home, Akash returns to Illinois, hoping to finally say goodbye and move on. But as their pasts catch up to them, Renu and Akash must decide between the lives they left behind and the ones they’ve since created, between making each other happy and setting themselves free.
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Coming Soon
Curious about what books will be released in the months ahead so you can pre-order or reserve them? Then click on the months below.
June's Books on Screen roundup includes the series premieres of Prime Video's "We Were Liars" and Netflix's "The Survivors"; the season premieres of "Grantchester" on PBS "Masterpiece" and "The Buccaneers" on Apple TV+; the season finale of "The Walking Dead: Dead City" on AMC; the continuation of Hulu's "Nine Perfect Strangers" and Max's "And Just Like That..."; the films The Life of Chuck and How to Train Your Dragon in theaters and Pie to Die For: A Hannah Swensen Mystery on Hallmark Mystery; and the DVD/Blu-ray releases of Snow White, The Friend, The Monkey, In the Lost Lands and A Working Man.