Adult

Hardly a day goes by when nine-year-old Laurent Lepage doesn't cry wolf. His tales are so extraordinary that no one can possibly believe him, including Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache, who now live in the Quebec village of Three Pine. But when the boy disappears, the villagers are faced with the possibility that one of his tall tales might have been true. And so begins a frantic search for the boy and the truth. What they uncover deep in the forest sets off a sequence of events that leads to murder, an old crime, an old betrayal, and right to the door of an old poet.

A brilliant, deeply dedicated psychologist, Grace Blades has a gift for treating troubled souls and tormented psyches. Only five years old when she witnessed her parents’ deaths in a bloody murder-suicide, Grace took refuge in her fierce intellect and found comfort in the loving couple who adopted her. But even as an adult with an accomplished professional life, Grace still has a dark, secret side. When her two worlds shockingly converge, Grace’s harrowing past returns with a vengeance.

Fearing for his life, journalist Philip Mangan has gone into hiding from the Chinese agents who have identified him as a Western spy. But when he is caught in a terrorist attack in East Africa and a shadowy Chinese figure approaches him with information on the origins of the attack, Mangan is suddenly back in the eye of the storm. Meanwhile, on a humid Hong Kong night, a key British Intelligence source is murdered minutes after meeting spy Trish Patterson. A sinister power is stirring that will use Mangan and Patterson as its pawns --- if they survive.

A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the Laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, and among switchboard operators, struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians.

A beautiful jogger, drained of blood, dismembered, then meticulously reassembled on the grass in Central Park. Subway derailments, plummeting elevators, collapsing construction cranes, apartment explosions --- all creating a bloody, senseless puzzle. Detective Frank Quinn knows that even while the slayer is taunting the cops and the public, he’s also screaming to be caught. But Quinn will have to risk everything he holds precious to bring in this killer.

Jo has been hiding the truth about her role in her high school boyfriend's drowning for 16 years. Then seven-year-old Sara Starr goes missing from the community beach. Rescue workers fail to uncover any sign of her --- but instead dredge up the bones Jo hoped would never be discovered, shattering the quiet lakeside community's tranquility. As Jo’s daughter, Caroline, searches for Sara, she uncovers the secrets her mother has been concealing, unraveling the very foundation of everything she knows about herself and her family.

David Heller has taken a job as a live-in aide to current quadriplegic and former playboy Hans Bromwell --- in part to extend his stay studying abroad, but in truth, he's looking to escape his own family still paralyzed by the death of his younger sister a decade ago. When David moves into the Bromwell house, his life becomes quickly entwined with those of Hans, his alcoholic sister, and her beautiful fatherless daughter. As David befriends the Bromwells, the details behind the family's staggering fall from grace are slowly revealed.

Geologist and adventurer Philip Mercer is visiting an old friend who’s working far down in Minnesota’s Leister Deep Mine. But he arrives too late to save Abe Jacobs and his climate-research team from a shocking, brutal attack. Mercer vows to seek revenge as well as answers, hoping to pick up Jacobs’ search for a cache of the rare crystals known as lightning stones --- rumored to have been aboard Amelia Earhart’s plane when it vanished in 1937. He must race to stay ahead of a team of highly trained assassins --- and to figure out if he’s chasing a rare scientific discovery, or merely a historical fairy tale.

Still mourning the death of his wife, private investigator Mark Novak accepts a case that may be his undoing. On the same day his wife died, the body of a teenage girl was pulled from the extensive and perilous cave system beneath Southern Indiana. Now the man who rescued the girl, who was believed to be her killer, begs Novak to uncover what really happened. Garrison is much like any place in America, proud and fortified against outsiders. For Mark to delve beneath the town's surface, he must match wits with the man who knows the caverns better than anyone. A man who seems to have lost his mind. A man who seems to know Mark Novak all too well.

Royce Dillard doesn't remember much about the day his parents --- and 123 other souls --- died in the 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster. He was only two years old when he was ripped from his mother's arms. But now Dillard, who lives off the grid with only a passel of dogs for company, is fighting for his life one more time: He's on trial for murder. Prosecutor Bell Elkins faces her toughest challenge yet in this haunting story of vengeance, greed and the fierce struggle for social justice.