Adult

On a warm summer evening in 1991, 17-year-old Julia Parker was murdered in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York. An area known for an exorbitant level of violence and crime, East New York had come to be known as the Killing Fields. In the six months after Julia Parker’s death, 62 more people were murdered in the same area. In the early 1990s, murder rates in the neighborhood climbed to the highest in NYPD history. East New York was dying. But how did this once thriving, diverse, family neighborhood fall into such ruin? The answer can be found two decades earlier. A compulsively readable hybrid of true crime and investigative journalism, THE KILLING FIELDS OF EAST NEW YORK reveals how white-collar crime reduced a prospering neighborhood to abandoned buildings and empty lots.

After nearly 18 months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there’s no more time for lessons. No more time for uncertainty. Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it’s impossible to know who to trust. Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves --- her dragons, her family, her home and him. Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything. They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find --- the truth. But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath.

Paris, 1947. Recovering from the Nazi occupation, the city suffers from an economy in shambles and an unraveled social fabric. Cecile Rosenbaum, from a bourgeois Jewish family that has lost everything, meets Minette Traoré, a feisty, French-born girl of Senegalese descent, on the bus to a Communist Youth Conference. There, she also meets Sebastien Danxomè, an aspiring architecture student from West Africa, and romance blooms. Back in Paris, Cecile and Sebastien find their budding love muddied by confused loyalties and unyielding cultural traditions. When Mack Gray, a charming African-American GI, sets his sights on Cecile, her complicated relationship with Sebastien, as well as her fierce dedication to her newfound political ideologies, are pushed to the brink.

Celebrated stage actress Mona Zahid wakes up on Thanksgiving morning to the clamor of guests packed into her Manhattan apartment and to a wave of dread. Her in-laws are lurking on the other side of the bedroom door; she’s still fighting with her husband; and in just a few weeks she will begin rehearsals as Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, the hardest role in theater. In an impulsive burst, Mona bounds out the door with the family dog in tow to find her estranged mentor, Milton Katz, who recently was forced out of the legendary theater company he founded amid accusations of sexual misconduct. Mona’s escape turns into an overnight adventure that brings her face to face with her past, with her creative power and its limitations, and ultimately, with all the people she has ever loved.

Sometimes, even a first-rate ghostwriter and successful mystery author needs to make a buck. Even if that means setting foot on a cruise ship, something she vowed she’d never do. To top it off, the “Get Lit Cruise” is being organized by Payton Garrett, a very popular, bestselling author --- and the ghostwriter’s long-time frenemy from back in their MFA days. Payton has acquired a rabid following who eagerly snapped up the invitations sent to a select few of her newsletter subscribers. The guests, all female, will receive personalized instruction from experts in five different writing genres. When an attendee is found dead under suspicious circumstances and several others suffer symptoms of poisoning, there are numerous motives and suspects to choose from. As the body count rises along with onboard tensions, no one is safe.

Sanjana Satyananda is trying to recover her life. It’s been a year since she walked out on her husband, a struggling actor named Killian, at a commune in India, after a disagreement about whether to have children. Now, Sanjana is struggling to resurrect her busted anthropology dissertation and crashing at her annoyingly perfect sister’s while her well-adjusted peers obsess over marriages, mortgages and motherhood. Sanjana needs to move forward --- and finalize her divorce ASAP. There’s just one problem: Killian is missing. As Sanjana tries to track him down, she’s bombarded with unnerving calls from women seeking her advice on pregnancy and fertility. Soon, Sanjana comes face to face with what her life might have been if she’d chosen parenthood. And the road not taken turns out to be wilder, stranger and more tempting than she imagined.

1940, Emilia-Romagna. Lili and Esti have been best friends since meeting at the University of Ferrara. There is a war being fought across borders, and in Italy, Mussolini’s Racial Laws have deemed Lili and Esti descendants of an “inferior” Jewish race, but life somehow goes on --- until Germany invades northern Italy, and the friends find themselves in occupied territory. Esti convinces Lili to flee first to a villa in the countryside to help hide a group of young war orphans, then to a convent in Florence, where they pose as nuns and forge false identification papers for the Underground. When disaster strikes at the convent, a critically wounded Esti asks Lili to take a much bigger step: to go on the run with Esti’s son, Theo. Terrified to travel on her own, Lili sets out on an epic journey, doing everything she can to keep Theo safe.

Cherry Hendricks might be down on her luck, but she can write the book on what makes something funny. She’s a professional clown who creates raucous, zany fun at gigs all over Orlando. Between her clowning and her shifts at an aquarium store for extra cash, she’s always hustling. Not to mention balancing her judgmental mother, her messy love life, and her equally messy community of fellow performers. Things start looking up when Cherry meets Margot the Magnificent, a much older lesbian magician. With Margot’s mentorship and industry connections, Cherry is sure to take her art to the next level. Plus, Margot is sexy as hell. It’s not long before Cherry must decide how much she’s willing to risk for Margot and for her own explosive new act --- and what kind of clown she wants to be under her suit.

Doris Grandfelt, an employee at an accounting firm, was brutally stabbed to death, but nobody knew exactly where the crime took place. Despite her twin sister Lara Grandfelt’s persistent calls to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the killer was never found. Twenty years later, Lara has been diagnosed with breast cancer and is determined to find Doris’ killer once and for all. She dumps the entire investigative file on every true-crime site in the world and offers a $5 million reward for information leading to the killer’s arrest. Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are called in to review anything that might be a new lead. When one of the bloggers locates the murder weapon, Lucas and Virgil begin to uncover vital details about the killer’s identity. But what they don’t know is that the killer lurks in plain sight.

It’s been nearly 10 years since Gabe has been gone when Lucy finds a tiny piece of paper in a box of his old photos. An address in Rome. Why did Gabe keep it, and what was he doing in Italy? Lucy buys a last-minute plane ticket. Impulsive, but Gabe always brought that out in her. Lucy’s journey to uncover Gabe’s secret leads her to Dr. Dax Armstrong, a New Yorker in Italy working with an NGO. His broad shoulders and sad, intense eyes draw Lucy in. His touch reaches her in a forgotten place --- one that no one has neared since Gabe. But her old life awaits, along with an earth-shattering decision --- whether she and Darren should tell their son, Samuel, the truth about his father. How can Lucy move forward while she’s rooted in the past? Fate broke her heart once. Can finding new love set her free?