Adult

Drawing on her own secrets, Madeline “Maddie” Schwartz helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl --- assistance that leads to a job at the city’s afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake. Cleo Sherwood was a young African-American woman who liked to have a good time. No one seems to know or care why she was killed except Maddie --- and the dead woman herself. Maddie is going to find the truth about Cleo’s life and death. Cleo’s ghost, privy to Maddie’s poking and prying, wants to be left alone.

It’s been several months since Simon Inescort keeled over the rail of a Nova Scotia–bound ferry, a massive heart attack to blame. Simon's widow, Lorca Pell, has sold their farmhouse to newlyweds Zachary and Muriel --- after revealing that the deed contains a “ghost clause,” an actual legal clause allowing for reimbursement if a recently purchased home turns out to be haunted. In fact, Simon finds himself still at home. He spends time replaying his marriage in his own mind, as if in poignant reel-to-reel, while also engaging in occasionally intimate observation of the new homeowners. But soon the crisis of a missing child threatens the tenuous domestic equilibrium, as the weight of the case falls to a rookie private detective.

Twenty years ago, Abigail Sorenson’s brother, Robert, went missing one day before her 16th birthday, never to be seen again. That same year, she began receiving scattered chapters in the mail of a self-help manual, The Guidebook, whose anonymous author promised to make her life soar to heights beyond her wildest dreams. The Guidebook’s missives have remained a constant in Abi’s life --- through her family’s grief over her brother’s disappearance, a move across continents, the devastating dissolution of her marriage, and the new beginning as a single mother and café owner in Sydney. Now, two decades after receiving those first pages, Abi is invited to an all-expenses-paid weekend retreat to learn “the truth” about The Guidebook.

The Mississippi Delta isn’t a place that Lydia Chin, an American-born Chinese private detective from Chinatown, NYC, ever thought she’d have reason to go. But when her mother tells her a cousin Lydia didn’t know she had is in jail in Clarksdale, Mississippi --- and that Lydia has to rush down south and get him out --- Lydia finds herself rolling down Highway 61 with Bill Smith, her partner, behind the wheel. From the river levees to the refinement of Oxford, from old cotton gins to new computer scams, Lydia soon finds that nothing in Mississippi is as she expected it to be. Including her cousin’s legal troubles --- or possibly even his innocence.

Victor Li is devastated by his father’s murder, and shocked by a confessional letter he finds among his father’s things. In it, his father admits that he was never just a restaurateur --- in fact, he was part of a vast international crime syndicate that formed during China’s leanest communist years. Victor travels to Beijing, where he navigates his father’s secret criminal life, confronting decades-old grudges, violent spats and a shocking new enterprise that the organization wants to undertake. Standing up against it is likely what got his father killed, but Victor remains undeterred. He enlists his growing network of allies and friends to finish what his father started, no matter the costs.

Gabriel Allon, the legendary chief of Israeli intelligence, has spent most of his life fighting terrorists, including the murderous jihadists financed by Saudi Arabia. Prince Khalid --- or KBM, as he is known --- has pledged to finally break the bond between the Kingdom and radical Islam. For that reason alone, Gabriel regards him as a valuable if flawed partner. Together they will become unlikely allies in a deadly secret war for control of the Middle East. The life of a child, and the throne of Saudi Arabia, hang in the balance. Both men have made their share of enemies. And both have everything to lose.

After serving time for a crime she didn’t commit, Evangeline returns home to discover that her father left her solely responsible for the family’s failing ranch, her mother blames her for her father’s death, and her brothers want her out of their way. With her family’s future squarely on her shoulders, she desperately searches for ways to save their home --- before they lose everything. Her only ally is the cop who sent her away, Chris Chambers, who is positive she took the fall for someone else. But the closer Evangeline and Chris get to exposing the truth --- and to each other --- the deeper Evangeline is drawn into a dangerous sting that will finally bring her justice and pave the way for a bright future.

For 13 days in 1976, teenage murderers April Cooper and Gabriel LeRoy terrorized Southern California's Inland Empire, killing a dozen victims before perishing themselves in a fire. Or did they? More than 40 years later, twentysomething podcast producer Quentin Garrison blames his troubled upbringing on the murders. And after a shocking message from a source, he has reason to believe April Cooper may still be alive. Meanwhile, New York City film columnist Robin Diamond is coping with rising doubts about her husband and terrifying threats from internet trolls. But that's nothing compared to the outrageous phone call she gets from Quentin...and a brutal home invasion that makes her question everything she ever believed in.

GROWING THINGS is a chilling collection of psychological suspense and literary horror from the multiple award-winning author of THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD and A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS. In “The Teacher,” a student is forced to watch a disturbing video that will haunt and torment her and her classmates’ lives. Four men rob a pawn shop at gunpoint only to vanish, one by one, as they speed away from the crime scene in “The Getaway.” In “Swim Wants to Know If It’s as Bad as Swim Thinks,” a meth addict kidnaps her daughter from her estranged mother as their town is terrorized by a giant monster…or not. Joining these haunting works are stories linked to Tremblay’s previous novels.

Audrey Coltrane signed up to train military pilots in Hawaii when the war in Europe began. She insists she is not interested in any dream-derailing romantic involvements, even with the disarming Lieutenant James Hart, who fast becomes a friend as treasured as the women she flies with. Then one fateful day, she gets caught in the air over Pearl Harbor just as the bombs begin to fall. To make everything she’s lost count for something, Audrey joins the Women Airforce Service Pilots program. The bonds she forms with her fellow pilots reignite a spark of hope in the face of war, and --- especially when James goes missing in action --- give Audrey the strength to cross the front lines and fight for everything she holds dear.