Adult

Taking over her parents’ estate-sale business is not the life’s work that Emma Lewis bargained for. Yes, she grew up helping them empty people’s nests, but nothing prepared her for her biggest and stickiest “get” --- the grand, beautiful house of ill repute masquerading as a decidedly beddable B&B. Should Emma turn down potential clients in need of decluttering just because they are shady, escort-y and proud of it? No. A girl must make a living.

London, 1953. Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she discovers a necklace in a box at a secondhand shop. The box is marked with the name of a department store in Paris, and she is certain she has seen the necklace before, when she worked with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe --- and that it holds the key to the mysterious death of her friend, Franny, during the war. Following the trail of clues to Paris, Louise seeks help from her former boss, Ian, with whom she shares a romantic history. She races to find the connection between the necklace, the department store and Franny’s death. But nothing is as it seems, and there are forces determined to keep the truth buried forever.

When professional hockey player Sig Gauthier’s car breaks down and his phone dies, he treks into a posh private country club to call a tow truck. There, he encounters the alluring Chloe Clifford, the manic pixie dream girl who captivates him immediately with her sense of adventure and penchant for stealing champagne. Sparks fly during a moonlight kiss. But when Sig finally arrives to meet his dad’s new girlfriend over dinner, Chloe is confusingly also there. It turns out that the girlfriend is Chloe’s mother. Oh, and they’re engaged. Sig’s dream girl is his future stepsister. Chloe and Sig know there can never be more than friendship between them. But keeping their relationship platonic grows harder amid the developing family drama, especially knowing they were meant for so much more.

When the stones of her house begin to rattle and shift and call out mysterious messages to her in the middle of the night, 99-year-old Pauline Sinclair knows she will not make it to her 100th birthday. She has lived a modest life in Mason Hall, a rural Jamaican village, educating herself with stolen books, raising her two children, and experiencing both deep passion and true loss with her beloved baby father. But Miss Pauline has buried many secrets. To avenge her enslaved ancestors, she has built her house, stone by stone, from the ruins of a plantation on her land. And she knows more than she has told about the disappearance of Turner Buchanan --- a white American man who came to Mason Hall decades ago to claim her land. The whispering stones are telling Miss Pauline that she must make peace with the past before she dies.

When they married Emperors Franz Joseph and Napoleon III, respectively, Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France became two of the most famous women on the planet. Becoming cultural and fashion icons of their time, they also played a pivotal role in ruling their realms during a tempestuous era characterized by unprecedented political and technological change. Fearless, adventurous and independent, Elisabeth and Eugénie represented a new kind of empress --- one who rebelled against tradition and anticipated and embraced modern values. Yet both women endured hardship in their private and public lives. Between them, Elisabeth and Eugénie were personally involved in every major international confrontation in their turbulent century, which witnessed thrilling technological advances, as well as revolutions, assassinations and wars.

Grabbing an armful of clothes off the clothesline, Ciara Fay straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. All she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe. On the surface, she has a perfect life. Her husband, Ryan, is a good provider, and they have another baby on the way. But he also monitors Ciara's every move, flies into unpredictable rages where he convinces her she can do nothing right, and has isolated her from work, friends and her beloved family. With no job and no support, Ciara struggles to provide a sense of normalcy for her little girls. Facing a broken housing system, they move into a hotel room on a floor reserved for women like her. Ryan, meanwhile, wages a relentless campaign to win her back, and Ciara wavers. He never hit her, after all. And don't the girls need a stable home?

All Hamish Macbeth wants is a quiet life in his peaceful home in the Highland village of Lochdubh. But when his newly assigned constable arrives, he presents Hamish with a surprise and a secret. Getting to the bottom of the secret becomes the least of Hamish’s problems when he meets a family who has a score to settle with a sinister man who has mysteriously gone missing. Discovering a murdered woman’s body puts further pressure on Hamish, especially when it becomes clear that the murdered woman and the missing man are linked. To Hamish’s horror, he then finds himself working on the murder case with the despicable Detective Chief Inspector Blair. With a growing list of suspects, ever more bewildering circumstances, and Blair hindering him at every turn, Hamish must find the murderer before anyone else falls victim.

Hana Babic is a quiet, middle-aged librarian in Minnesota who wants nothing more than to be left alone. But when a detective arrives with the news that her best friend has been murdered, Hana knows that something evil has come for her, a dark remnant of the past she and her friend had shared. Thirty years before, Hana was someone else: Nura Divjak, a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia --- until Serbian soldiers arrived to slaughter her entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters, where she became not only a fierce warrior but a legend --- the deadly Night Mora. But a shattering final act forced Nura to flee to the United States with a bounty on her head. Now, someone is hunting Hana, and her friend has paid the price.

Cotton Malone is on the hunt for a forgotten 16th-century Pledge of Christ --- a sworn promise made by Pope Julius II that evidences a monetary debt owed by the Vatican, still valid after five centuries --- now worth in the trillions of dollars. But collecting that debt centers on what happened to the famed Medici of Florence --- a family that history says died out, without heirs, centuries ago. Who will become the next prime minister of Italy, and who will be the next pope? Finding answers proves difficult until Cotton realizes that everything hinges on when, and if, the Medici return.

At every death scene, NYPD Detective Michael Bennett says a prayer over the victim. But recently, too many of the departed have been fellow cops. “I want you to look at these deaths on special assignment,” NYPD Inspector Celeste Cantor says. “Report only to me.” Bennett excels as a solo investigator. But he's chasing a killer who feeds on isolation...and paranoia.