Adult

Elle has the chance of a lifetime to write a big-budget movie set in New York City. The only problem? She’s had writer’s block for months, and her screenplay is due at the end of the summer. In a desperate attempt at inspiration, Elle ends up back in the city she swore she would never return to, in an apartment she could never afford. It’s the perfect place to write her screenplay…until she realizes that her new neighbor is tech “Billionaire Bachelor” Parker Warren, her stairwell hookup from two years ago. When seeing him again turns into a full night of hate-fueled writing, Elle realizes that her enemy/twisted muse just might be the key to finishing her screenplay. He needs to fake a buzzy relationship during his company’s precarious acquisition. She needs to write a movie around a list of NYC locations. Summers always end, and so will this agreement. It’s all pretend. Until it isn’t.

Ten strangers wake up inside an old, locked house. They have no recollection of how they got there. In order to escape, they have to solve the disappearance of a young woman. But a killer also stalks the halls of the house, and soon the body count starts to rise. Who are these strangers? Why were they chosen? Why would someone want to kill them? And who --- or what --- lurks in the cellar?

Babs Dionne --- proud Franco-American, doting grandmother, and vicious crime matriarch --- rules her small town of Waterville, Maine, with an iron fist. She controls the flow of drugs into Little Canada with the help of her loyal lieutenants, girlfriends since they were teenagers, and her eldest daughter, Lori, a Marine vet struggling with addiction. When a drug kingpin discovers that his numbers are down in the upper northeast, he sends a malevolent force, known only as The Man, to investigate. At the same time, Babs' youngest daughter, Sis, has gone missing, which doesn't seem at all like a coincidence. In 24 hours, Sis will be found dead, and the whole town will seek shelter from Babs’ wrath.

On April 18, 1775, a Boston-based silversmith, engraver and anti-British political operative named Paul Revere set out on a borrowed horse to fulfill a dangerous but crucial mission: to alert American colonists of advancing British troops, which would seek to crush their nascent revolt. Revere had completed at least 18 previous rides across New England and other colonies, disseminating intelligence about British movements. But this ride was like no other, and its consequences in the months and years to come --- as the American Revolution morphed from isolated skirmishes to a full-fledged war --- became one of our founding legends. In THE RIDE, Kostya Kennedy presents a dramatic new narrative of the events of April 18 and 19, 1775, informed by fresh primary and secondary source research into archives, family letters and diaries, contemporary accounts, and more.

Ernest Cuneo played Ivy League football at Columbia University and was in the old Brooklyn Dodgers NFL franchise before becoming a city hall lawyer and “Brain Trust'' aide to President Roosevelt. But his status as a spy remained a secret, hiding in plain sight. During this time, Cuneo began a close friendship with British spy Ian Fleming and helped inspire Fleming's James Bond novels. He also began a love affair with one of Churchill's agents at Rockefeller Center, Margaret Watson, a beautiful Canadian woman with a photographic memory ideal for spycraft. In one nighttime attack, Watson was nearly smothered to death by a Nazi assassin. Cuneo’s transformation from a gridiron athlete into a high-stakes intelligence go-between and political influencer is one of the great untold stories of American espionage. He has remained “invisible” in the public eye --- until now.

Amanda Knox spent nearly four years in prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit --- and became a notorious tabloid story in the process. Though she was exonerated, it’s taken more than a decade for her to reclaim her identity and truly feel free. FREE recounts how Knox survived prison, the mistakes she made, and the misadventures she had reintegrating into society, culminating in the untold story of her return to Italy --- and the extraordinary relationship she’s built with the man who sent her to prison. It is the gripping saga of what happens when you become the definition of notorious, but have quietly returned to the matters of a normal life --- seeking a life partner, finding a job, or even just going out in public.

Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, will grow to have a feisty and somewhat uncompromising character in adult life. But she is always a one-off, from her infancy. Young Elphie is shaped and molded by the behaviors of her promiscuous mother, Melena, and her pious father, Frex. She suffers ordinary childhood jealousies when her sister, saintly Nessarose, and her brother, junior felon Shell, arrive. She first encounters the mistreatment of the Animal populations of Oz, which live adjacent to but not intertwined with human settlements, haunted by a Monkey and receiving aid from Dwarf Bears. She thrashes through her first bruising attempts at friendship, a possible lifeline from her tricky family life. And she gleans the benefits of an education --- until she arrives at the doors of Shiz University, about to meet the radiant creature that is Galinda.

Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and irritating exes rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn't these be the best years of her life? Why doesn't it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity. Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she’d always dismissed as a foolish fantasy. But he is also carrying baggage of his own. When the fallout of a decades-old entanglement resurfaces, Max must decide what forgiveness really means.

When Abby steps foot on Isla Colel, she isn’t sure what she’ll find. She only knows that she needs to see the place where her fiancée, Eszter, died to try and make sense of the tragic accident. Though the island was once a bustling tourist hub, a hurricane has left it a shell of its former self, with only a handful of residents remaining. Even the once-daily ferry to the mainland now runs every week or so. There, Abby befriends an alluring group of expats, but her sense of unease surges when one of them says he knows the truth about Eszter’s final days. Before he can tell her more, though, he vanishes from the island. As her quest for the truth unearths dark secrets, shady pasts and a web of lies, Abby grows more determined than ever to find out what happened to the love of her life.

Sandy thought she was making her greatest mistake yet when she got unexpectedly pregnant in her mid-30s by a dating-app flop. Now, her baby Rosie is the love of her life. But trying to co-parent with her daughter’s dad, a wannabe rock star, is a challenge --- and seems to be veering into catastrophe territory when Sandy finds out through social media that her daughter has a half-sibling Sandy doesn’t know anything about. Enter her ex’s ex, Stephanie, the other mother. When the two women meet, they are shocked to learn how much they have in common. Now Sandy needs to figure out what her and Rosie’s family looks like with all these new additions. Could life in a “mommune” be the answer to her prayers, or just a new brand of chaos?