Adult

1876. In the glittering world of Manhattan's upper crust, women are valued by their pedigree, dowry and, most importantly, connections. They have few rights and even less independence --- what they do have is society. The more celebrated the hostess, the more powerful the woman. And none is more powerful than Caroline Astor --- the Mrs. Astor. But times are changing. Alva Vanderbilt has recently married into one of America's richest families. But what good is dizzying wealth when society refuses to acknowledge you? Alva, who knows what it is to have nothing, will do whatever it takes to have everything.

London, 1939. Eva Harlow and her best friend, Precious Dubose, are trying to make their way as fashion models. When Eva falls in love with Graham St. John, an aristocrat and Royal Air Force pilot, she can’t believe her luck. Then the Blitz devastates her world, and Eva finds herself slipping into a web of intrigue, spies and secrets. All it takes is one unwary moment to change their lives forever. London, 2019. American journalist Maddie Warner, whose life has been marked by the tragic loss of her mother, travels to London to interview Precious about her life in pre-WWII London. She finds herself drawn to both Precious and Colin, her enigmatic surrogate nephew. As Maddie gets closer to her, she begins to unravel Precious’ haunting past.

Professor Pi Suleman is a Black man from Memphis with a lot to endure. He is constantly forced to bite his tongue in the face of one of his tenured colleague’s prejudices and microaggressions. At the same time, Pi is being blackmailed by a powerful white professor who threatens to claim he assaulted her, when in fact the truth is just the opposite. When he meets Gemma Buckingham, a sophisticated entrepreneur who has just moved to Memphis to escape a deep heartbreak, things begin to look up. But Pi’s whirlwind romance is interrupted when his absentee father passes away, and Pi is called to Los Angeles to both collect his inheritance and learn about the man who never acknowledged him.

An off-duty Coast Guardsman is fishing with his family when he calls in some suspicious behavior from a nearby boat. It’s a snazzy craft, slick and outfitted with extra horsepower, and it’s zipping along until it slows to pick up a surfaced diver…a diver who was apparently alone, without his own boat, in the middle of the ocean. None of it makes sense unless there's something hinky going on, and his hunch is proved right when all three Guardsmen who come out to investigate are shot and killed. When the FBI's investigation stalls out, they call in Lucas Davenport. And when his case turns lethal, Davenport will need to bring in every asset he can claim, including a detective with a fundamentally criminal mind: Virgil Flowers.

In 1873, a Cheyenne chief offers President Grant the opportunity to exchange 1,000 horses for 1,000 white women, in order to marry them with his warriors and create a lasting peace. These women, "recruited" by force in the penitentiaries and asylums of the country, gradually integrate the way of life of the Cheyenne, at the time when the great massacres of the tribes begin. After the battle of Little Big Horn, some female survivors decide to take up arms against the United States, which has stolen from the Native Americans their lands, their way of life, their culture and their history. This ghost tribe of rebellious women will soon go underground to wage an implacable battle, which will continue from generation to generation.

Isaac lives alone with his dog, grieving the recent death of his teenage son. Next door, Lorrie, a working single mother, struggles with a heinous act committed by her own teenage son. The two parents are emotionally stranded, isolated by their great losses --- until an unfamiliar 16-year-old girl shows up, bridges the gap and changes everything. Evangeline’s arrival at first feels like a blessing, but she is also clearly hiding something. When Isaac, who has retreated into his Quaker faith, isn’t equipped to handle her alone, Lorrie forges her own relationship with the girl. Soon all three characters are forced to examine what really happened in their overlapping pasts, and what it all possibly means for a shared future.

The security consultant “Jane Smith” receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit that holds a taxidermied hummingbird and clues leading her to a taxidermied salamander. Silvina, the dead woman who left the note, was a reputed ecoterrorist and the daughter of an Argentine industrialist. By taking the hummingbird from the storage unit, Jane sets in motion a series of events that quickly spiral beyond her control. Soon, Jane and her family are in danger, with few allies to help her make sense of the true scope of the peril. Is the only way to safety to follow in Silvina’s footsteps? Is it too late to stop? As Jane desperately seeks answers about why Silvina contacted her, time is running out --- for her and possibly for the world.

The bold one, they call her --- too bold for most. To her father, the great duke of Poland, Swietoslawa and her two sisters represent three chances for an alliance. Three marriages on which to build his empire. But Swietoslawa refuses to be simply a pawn in her father's schemes; she seeks a throne of her own, with no husband by her side. The gods may grant her wish, but crowns sit heavy, and power is a sword that cuts both ways.

For 30 years, the Fellowship of the Anointed isolated its members, conditioning them to believe that pain is power and magic is suffering. But when their leader is arrested, all her teachings come into question. How will they adjust to the world they were taught to fear, and how will they relate to the cult's last crusader, Lark? For Kane, survival means rejecting the magic he and his lover suffered for. For Deryn, the cult's collapse is an opportunity to prove they are worth as much as their Anointed brother. For Calvin, lark is the alluring embodiment of the magic he's been seeking his entire life. But for Lark, the Fellowship isn’t over. Before he can begin to discover himself and heal a lifetime of traumas, he has a monster to slay.

Long before The Lost Kitchen became a world dining destination with every seating filled the day the reservation book opens each spring, Erin French was a girl roaming barefoot on a 25-acre farm, a teenager falling in love with food while working the line at her dad’s diner, and a young woman finding her calling as a professional chef at her tiny restaurant tucked into a 19th-century mill. This singular memoir --- a classic American story --- invites readers to Erin's corner of her beloved Maine to share the real person behind the “girl from Freedom” fairytale, and the not-so-picture-perfect struggles that have taken every ounce of her strength to overcome, and that make Erin’s life triumphant.