Adult

LeAnne Hogan went to Afghanistan as a rising star in the military and came back a much lesser person, with a missing eye and half her face badly scarred. Shattered by one last blow --- the sudden death of her hospital roommate, Marci --- LeAnne finds herself on a fateful drive across the country, reflecting on her past and seeing no future. Arriving in the rain-soaked small town in Washington state that Marci had called home, she makes a troubling discovery: Marci’s eight-year-old daughter has vanished. As she becomes obsessed with finding the little girl, LeAnne and a new canine companion of hers are drawn into danger as dark and menacing as her last Afghan mission.

Sweet sixteen. It’s an exciting coming of age, a milestone and a rite of passage. Jeff and Kim Sanders plan on throwing a party for their daughter, Hannah --- a sweet girl with good grades and nice friends. Rather than an extravagant, indulgent affair, they invite four girls over for pizza, cake, movies and a sleepover. What could possibly go wrong? After a tragic accident occurs, Jeff and Kim’s flawless life in a wealthy San Francisco suburb suddenly begins to come apart. In the ugly aftermath, friends become enemies, dark secrets are revealed in the Sanders’ marriage and the truth about their perfect daughter, Hannah, is exposed.

On an early April afternoon, a bomb goes off in the Islamic Cooperation Council’s offices in Oslo, killing 23 people. The Police and Security Service suspect an extremist organization to be responsible for the attack, a suspicion that grows stronger when threats of yet another, bigger explosion during the planned celebration of the Norwegian constitution reach the authorities. Hanne Wilhelmsen is approached by her long-lost friend, Billy T., whose son Linus has undergone some disturbing changes recently. As the mood of the city darkens, Hanne tries to help Billy T. reach out to Linus and realizes that Oslo is up against forces far more terrible and menacing than ever before.

Lydia Smith is a clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore whose life comes unglued when Joey Molina kills himself in the bookstore’s upper room. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions. But when Lydia flips through his books, she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia? As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long-buried memory from her own violent childhood.

This follow-up to FACEOFF features 22 of the world’s bestselling and critically acclaimed thriller writers pairing their series characters in an 11-story anthology curated by the International Thriller Writers. MATCHUP takes the never-before-seen bestseller pairings of FACEOFF and adds a delicious new twist: gender. Eleven of the world’s best female thriller writers, from Diana Gabaldon to Kathy Reichs to Charlaine Harris, are paired with 11 of the world’s best male thriller writers, including John Sandford, C.J. Box and Nelson DeMille, among others.

New York, a small town on the tip of Manhattan island, 1746. One rainy evening in November, a handsome young stranger fresh off the boat arrives at a countinghouse door on Golden Hill Street. Mr. Smith is amiable and charming, yet strangely determined to keep suspicion shimmering. In his pocket, he has what seems to be an order for a thousand pounds, a huge sum, and he won’t explain why, where he comes from, or what he is planning to do in the colonies that requires so much money. Should the New York merchants trust him? Should they risk their credit and refuse to pay? Should they befriend him, seduce him, arrest him --- maybe even kill him?

Set along the East Coast from Maine to Key West, Ann Beattie’s new collection explores unconventional friendships, frustrated loves, mortality and aging. One theme of THE ACCOMPLISHED GUEST is people paying visits or receiving visitors, traveling to see old friends, the joys and tolls of hosting company (and of being hosted). The occasion might be a wedding, a birthday, a reunion, an annual Christmas party, or another opportunity to gather and attempt to bond with biological relatives or chosen families. In some stories, as in life, what begins as a benign social event becomes a situation played for high stakes.

Christian Stern, an ambitious young scholar and alchemist, arrives in Prague intent on making his fortune at the court of the eccentric Rudolf II. The night of his arrival, he stumbles upon the body of a young woman whose throat has been slashed. Christian quickly finds himself entangled in the machinations of several ruthless courtiers, and before long he comes to the attention of the Emperor himself. Rudolf sets Christian the task of solving the mystery of the woman’s murder. But Christian soon realizes that he has blundered into the midst of a power struggle that threatens to subvert the throne itself. And as he gets ever nearer to the truth of what happened that night, he finally sees that his own life is in grave danger.

A group of some of the most powerful people in the government, the military and the private sector has begun a brutal plan to quietly take over the reins of the U.S. government. They’ve begun to remove the people who stand in their way and replace them with their own sympathizers and puppets. They’ve already taken out the Speaker of the House --- whose death was made to look like an accidental drowning --- and the president and vice president are next. Once they have their own people in place, they plan to start a bloody, brutal war on an unimaginable scale. With the Secretary of State now dead, Dewey Andreas desperately tries to unravel the plot before the conspirators succeed in killing millions of innocents.

Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge --- until strangers arrive in force, and the children are thrown into an orphanage. Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all. But when she returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family's long-hidden history, on a path that ultimately will lead either to devastation or to redemption.