Adult

At just 35, reclusive billionaire Robbie Malcolm is a renowned financial prognosticator, a celebrated philanthropist and a mathematical genius. Also, he’s dying, which is a fact he’s carefully concealing from the world. As he takes stock, Robbie realizes that his wealth means nothing if he can’t help the people who matter most. So he invites his oldest friends --- Blair, Cat and Wade --- to their beloved Fenwick Island on the coast of Delaware to share his secret and to reveal plans for each of them that he believes will change their lives forever. However, Robbie isn’t the only one with secrets. His plans may look good on paper, but are they any match for the utter disaster that is real life?

Eleanor and Cam meet at a crafts fair in Vermont in the early 1970s. She’s an artist and writer, he makes wooden bowls. Within four years they are parents to three children, two daughters and a red-headed son who fills his pockets with rocks, plays the violin and talks to God. If Eleanor and Cam don’t make love as often as they used to, they have something that matters more. Their family. Then comes a terrible accident, caused by Cam’s negligence. Unable to forgive him, Eleanor is consumed by bitterness, losing herself in her life as a mother, while Cam finds solace with a new young partner. Over the decades that follow, the five members of this fractured family make surprising discoveries and decisions that occasionally bring them together, and often tear them apart.

In the summer of 1979, Jackie Pierce spent three months of infinite freedom at her bohemian uncle’s sprawling estate on the California coast. She and her cousin Willa fell into a fast friendship…until the summer abruptly ended in tragedy, and Willa silently slipped away into the night. Twenty years later, Jackie unexpectedly inherits The Sandcastle and returns there to ready it for sale. It turns out that before her estranged aunt’s death, she had promised an up-and-coming producer he could record a tribute album to her late uncle at the property’s studio. When a piece of the past resurfaces and sparks new questions about Willa’s disappearance, Jackie must discover if the dark secret she’s kept ever since is even the truth at all.

Marisa Rosso can’t understand why everyone else is getting on with their lives as she still struggles to get over the death of her beloved grandfather. Retreating further and further from normal life, she moves to the remote tidal island of Mount Polbearne, at the foot of Cornwall, hoping for peace and solitude, while carrying on her job as a registrar, dealing with births, weddings and deaths. Unfortunately --- or fortunately? --- the solitude she craves proves elusive. Between her noisy Russian piano-teaching neighbor, the bustle and community spirit of the tiny village struggling back to life after the quarantine, and the pressing need to help save the local bakery, can Marisa find her joy again at the end of the world?

Aubrey, the title character of Gerry Andersen’s most successful novel, Dream Girl, is so captivating that Gerry’s readers insist she’s real. Gerry knows she exists only in his imagination. So how can Aubrey be calling Gerry, bed-bound since a freak fall? A virtual prisoner in his penthouse, Gerry is dependent on his incurious young assistant and a dull, slow-witted night nurse. Could the cryptic caller be one of his three ex-wives playing a vindictive trick after all these years? Or is she Margot, an ex-girlfriend who keeps trying to insinuate her way back into Gerry’s life? Aubrey is threatening to visit him, suggesting that Gerry owes her something. Is the threat real or a sign of dementia? Then he wakes up to a woman’s dead body next to his bed and the terrifying uncertainty of whether or not he is responsible.

It is 1987, and a small Irish community is preparing for a wedding. The day before the ceremony, a group of young friends, including the bride and groom, are involved in an accident. Three survive. Three are killed. The lives of the families are shattered, and the rifts between them ripple throughout the small town. Connor survived, but living among the angry and the mourning is almost as hard as carrying the shame of having been the driver. He leaves the only place he knows for another life, taking his secrets with him. Eventually he makes a home for himself in New York, where he finds shelter and the possibility of forging a new life. But the secrets will not be silenced, and Connor will have to confront his past.

It’s the spring of 1969, and henna artist Lakshmi, now married to Dr. Jay Kumar, directs the Healing Garden in Shimla. Her protégé, Malik, has finished his private school education. At 20, he has just met a young woman named Nimmi when he leaves to apprentice at the Facilities Office of the Jaipur Royal Palace. Their latest project: a state-of-the-art cinema. Power and money move seamlessly among the wealthy class, and favors flow from Jaipur’s Royal Palace, but only if certain secrets remain buried. When the cinema’s balcony tragically collapses on opening night, blame is placed where it is convenient. But Malik suspects something far darker and sets out to uncover the truth.

Two young girls plot a murder by witchcraft. Soon afterwards a government clerk dies painfully under mysterious circumstances. His colleague, James Marwood, is asked to investigate, but the task brings unexpected dangers. Meanwhile, architect Cat Hakesby is working for a merchant who lives on Slaughter Street, where the air smells of blood and a captive Barbary lion prowls the stables. Then a prestigious new commission arrives. Cat must design a Poultry House for the woman that the King loves most in all the world. Unbeknownst to all, at the heart of this lies a royal secret so explosive that it could not only rip apart England but change the entire face of Europe.

Three months ago, Lena Nguyen’s estranged twin sister, Cambry, drove to a remote bridge and jumped 200 feet to her death. That is the official police version, but Lena isn’t buying it. Now she’s come to that very bridge, driving her dead twin’s car and armed with a cassette recorder, determined to find out what really happened by interviewing the highway patrolman who allegedly discovered her sister’s body. But Corporal Raymond Raycevic’s story seems a bit off. Perhaps most troubling of all, he is referred to by name in Cambry’s final enigmatic text to her sister: Please Forgive Me. As her twin’s final hours come into focus, Lena’s search turns into a harrowing tooth-and-nail fight for her own survival --- one that will test everything she thought she knew about her sister and herself.

Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, who can hear the thoughts and longings of those around her and feels compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a restless creature of fire, once free to roam the desert but now imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they’ll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and try to pass as human. THE HIDDEN PALACE follows their lives and others as they collide and interleave. Can Chava and Ahmad find their places in the human world while remaining true to each other? Or will their opposing natures and desires eventually tear them apart --- especially once they encounter, thrillingly, other beings like themselves?