Adult

A top-ranking Iranian military official is killed while trying to defect to the West. An investigative journalist is imprisoned for writing an article critical of the Turkish government. An Iranian nuclear scientist is assassinated on the streets of Tehran. Then Paul Wallinger, MI6’s most senior agent in Turkey, dies in a puzzling plane crash. Fearing the worst, MI6 bypasses the usual protocol and brings disgraced agent Tom Kell in from the cold to investigate. Kell soon discovers what Wallinger already had begun to suspect --- that there’s a mole somewhere in the Western intelligence.

Years ago, Anique Pomerleau kidnapped and murdered a string of girls in Canada, then narrowly eluded capture. It was a devastating defeat for Dr. Temperance Brennan and police detective Andrew Ryan. Now, Pomerleau has resurfaced in the United States, linked to victims in Vermont and North Carolina. When another child is snatched, the reign of terror promises to continue --- unless Brennan can rise to the challenge and make good on her second chance to stop a psychopath.

In Philadelphia, homicide is at an all-time high. With each violent crime, tension builds between the police department, the mayor’s office and the Citizens Oversight Committee. The most vocal activist, reformed drug dealer Reverend Josiah Cross, places the blame, and with it a target, squarely on the back of homicide sergeant Matt Payne. Now Payne must navigate death threats and misdirected public outrage to follow a strange pattern of seemingly unrelated killings. If he can’t find his way through, it could spell an end to his reputation, his work --- and maybe even his life.

Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. But he can’t hide from his past, and it’s not long before it comes looking for him. He uncovers a spell that could create magical utopia, a new Fillory --- but casting it will set in motion a chain of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. To save them, he will have to risk sacrificing everything.

Gideon Crew is living on borrowed time. When his mysterious employer gives him an eyebrow-raising mission, he has no reason to refuse. His task: steal a page from the priceless Book of Kells. Gideon accomplishes the impossible --- only to learn that hidden beneath the gorgeously illuminated image is a treasure map dating back to the time of the ancient Greeks. The treasure to which it leads is no ordinary fortune. It is something far more precious: an amazing discovery that could perhaps even save Gideon's life.

Still recovering from traumas both physical and emotional, Jad Bell is tasked with bringing in the Uzbek, principal organizer of the terrorist attack that nearly cost Bell his ex-wife and daughter. But the Uzbek is just the beginning: his employer, the Architect, has already set in motion another, even more devastating attack. At the center of it all are two women under deep cover.

A shooting at a high school in the San Fernando Valley has left a community shaken to its core. Two students are identified as the killers. Both are dead, believed to have committed a mutual suicide. In the aftermath of the shooting, LA Special Trials prosecutor Rachel Knight teams up with her best girlfriend, LAPD detective Bailey Keller. As Rachel and Bailey interview students at the high school, they realize that the facts don't add up. Could it be that the students suspected of being the shooters are actually victims?

In 1863 Russell's Knob is home to a diverse population of blacks and whites and reds who have intermarried and lived in relative harmony for generations. It is a haven for Dossie Bird, who has escaped north along the Underground Railroad and now feels the embrace of the Smoot family. Tentatively, Dossie begins to lay down roots-until an act of violence propels her away from Russell's Knob and eventually into the mayhem of New York City's mean streets.

OFF THE LEASH is about the strange, wonderful, neurotic, and eccentric dog people who gather daily at Amory Park, overlooking Boston. And it’s about Matthew Gilbert’s transformation from dedicated homebody to joyful member of the dog park club: an oddball group of dog people with fur on their jackets and biscuits in their pockets.

The Duke of Wellington remarked that Waterloo was “a damned nice thing,” meaning uncertain or finely balanced. He was right. For his part, Napoleon reckoned “the English are bad troops and this affair is nothing more than eating breakfast.” He was wrong, and this gripping and dramatic narrative history by veteran historian Gordon Corrigan --- in time for the bicentennial in 2015 --- shows just how wrong.