Adult

After a rocky jaunt in Maine, Stone Barrington is settling back in New York City when an old client reaches out for help with a delicate matter. A feud they thought was put to rest long ago has reemerged with a vengeance, and reputations --- and money --- are now on the line. As Stone sets out to unravel a tangled web of crime and secrets, his mission becomes even more complicated when he makes an irresistible new acquaintance. In both the underbelly and upper echelons of New York, everyone has something to hide --- and if Stone has learned anything, it’s that history has a way of repeating itself.

The characters in SONGS FOR THE FLAMES are men and women touched by violence --- sometimes directly, sometimes only in passing --- but whose lives are changed forever, consumed by fire and by unexpected encounters and unyielding forces. A photographer becomes obsessed with the traumatic past that an elegant woman, a fellow guest staying at a countryside ranch, would rather leave behind. A military reunion forces a soldier to confront a troubling history, both personal and on a larger scale. And the search for a book leads a writer to the fascinating story of why a woman is buried next to a graveyard, rather than in it --- and the remarkable account of her journey from France to Colombia as a child orphan.

With their long necks, sheer tights and taut buns, Dara and Marie Durant have only known the course of a well-bred dancer. Not much changes when their parents face death in a tragic accident. As Dara and Marie take over their mother's duty of running the Durant School of Dance, along with Charlie, Dara's husband and once their mother's prized student, the sisters perfect a fine dance, circling around one another, six days a week, keeping the studio thriving. But when another eerily suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school's annual performance of "The Nutcracker" --- a season of tense competition, provoked anxiety and wild exhilaration --- an interloper arrives and threatens the sisters' delicate balance.

Laurel Hill and her precocious daughter, Skye, live on Lake Superior, where the local school has classes of just four children, and the nearest hospital is a helicopter ride away. But on one otherwise normal afternoon, their landlord decides to evict them in favor of a more profitable summer rental; without any warning, they are pushed farther to the margins. Suddenly it feels like the independence that has defined them is a liability. And when a dangerous incident threatens to separate them, Laurel and Skye must forever choose: Will they leave the place they love and the hardscrabble life they've built to move closer to civilization, or risk everything to embrace the emptiness and wildness that has defined them?

Shy and reclusive, 30-year-old librarian June Jones would rather spend her time buried in books than venture out into the world. But when her library is threatened with closure, she is forced to emerge from behind the shelves to save the heart of her community and the place that holds the dearest memories of her mother. Joining a band of eccentric yet dedicated locals in a campaign to keep the library, June opens herself up to other people for the first time since her mother died. It just so happens that her old school friend, Alex Chen, is back in town and willing to lend a helping hand. The kindhearted lawyer's feelings for her are obvious to everyone but June, who won't believe that anyone could ever care for her in that way.

When a young man is found gruesomely murdered in a London houseboat, it triggers questions about three women who knew him. Laura is the troubled one-night-stand last seen in the victim’s home. Carla is his grief-stricken aunt, already mourning the recent death of yet another family member. And Miriam is the nosy neighbor clearly keeping secrets from the police. Three women with separate connections to the victim. Three women who are --- for different reasons --- simmering with resentment. When it comes to revenge, even good people might be capable of terrible deeds. How far might any one of them go to find peace? How long can secrets smolder before they explode into flame?

Isabel Delancey, a classical violinist, has always taken her comfortable life for granted. But when her husband dies suddenly, leaving her with a mountain of debt, she and her two children are forced to abandon their home and move to the Spanish House, a now-dilapidated manor Isabel inherited in the English countryside. With the house falling down around them, and the last of her savings disappearing fast, Isabel turns to her neighbors for help, not knowing that her mere presence there has stirred up long-standing obsessions. As she fights to make her house a home, passions and lives collide. Isabel will discover an instinct for survival she never knew she had --- and that a heart can play a new song.

Working as a consultant for Kamala Harris’ attorney general campaign in Obama-era San Francisco, Seema has constructed a successful life for herself in the West, despite still struggling with her father’s long-ago decision to exile her from the family after she came out as lesbian. Now, nine months pregnant and estranged from the Black father of her unborn son, Seema seeks solace in the company of those she once thought lost to her: her ailing mother, Nafeesa, and her devoutly religious sister, Tahera. But instead of a joyful reconciliation anticipating the birth of a child, the events of this fateful week unearth years of betrayal, misunderstanding and complicated layers of love.

Police detective Hannah Duncker didn’t expect to return to her native Öland. She fled after her father’s murder conviction and returns to make peace with her shame. She has a new job with the local police and a nosy new partner. A 15-year-old’s death catapults her into a murder investigation that resurrects ghosts from her previous life. As she hunts for the truth, she must confront the people she abandoned. Not all are pleased to see her back home, and she soon learns that digging through the past comes with consequences.

Raised in a secluded island mansion deep in the woods and kept isolated by her true crime-obsessed parents, Dahlia Lighthouse is unable to move beyond the disappearance of her twin brother, Andy, when they were 16. After several years away and following her father’s death, Dahlia returns to the house, where the family makes a gruesome discovery: buried in their father’s plot is another body --- Andy’s, his skull split open with an ax. Dahlia is quick to blame Andy’s murder on the serial killer who terrorized the island for decades, while the rest of her family reacts to the revelation in unsettling ways. As Dahlia grapples with her own grief and horror, she realizes that her eccentric family, and the mansion itself, may hold the answers to what happened to her twin.