Adult

When a cloaked, disfigured man leaves a dead woman in a garbage bag on Dave Robicheaux’s property, he knows his world and family are about to change. With Valerie Benoit, a detective new to the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department who is grappling with sexist and racist harassment from their colleagues, and the volatile but fiercely loyal Clete Purcel, Dave embarks on an investigation that brings him into the most dangerous moments of his career and threatens the lives of Valerie and his daughter, Alafair. He encounters a local handyman who leaves cryptic notes and warns of the ghosts who roam the shores of the bayou and is targeted by a vicious New Orleans button man and gangsters from the north.

Nova Scotia, 1796. Cora, an orphan newly arrived from Jamaica, has never felt cold like this. In the depths of winter, everyone in her community huddles together in their homes to keep warm. So when she sees a shadow slipping through the trees, Cora thinks her eyes are deceiving her...until she creeps out into the moonlight and finds the tracks in the snow. Agnes is in hiding. On the run from her former life, she has learned what it takes to survive alone in the wilderness. But she can afford no mistakes. When she first spies the young woman in the woods, she is afraid. Yet Cora is fearless, and their paths are destined to cross. Deep among the cedars, Cora and Agnes find a fragile place of safety. But when Agnes’ past closes in, they are confronted with the dangerous price of freedom --- and of love.

Reeling from tragedy, a former jazz musician turned schoolteacher named Adi answers a job listing advertising a chance to save the world. The assignment: to spend five weeks alone on the tiny, isolated Pacific Island of Santa Flora righting an ecological balance that has gone severely out of whack, with the aim of preserving countless bird and plant species from certain extinction. What follows, however, is anything but balanced. The threats to the once-Edenic island, Adi soon learns, aren’t exactly what his employers said they were --- and, complicating things further, he discovers he’s not alone on the island. Fearful for his own life, and for the fate of the island's, Adi spends his sun-drenched days rooting out the true threat to Santa Flora, and, by extension, to the world it occupies --- and the desperate steps he must take to eradicate it.

Metro PD detective John Sampson stands in a crater in the middle of a DC street, calling in the bomb squad. “Dispatch, this is Sampson. Contact the FBI and the ATF. We’ve got a suspected terrorist attack here.” In Chapel Hill, NC, Alex Cross searches the apartment of a missing psychology grad student --- his own son, Damon. Has following in his famous father’s footsteps made Damon a target? From FBI headquarters, in police stations, on airplanes, and at murder scenes, the detectives track crimes committed hundreds of miles apart. It will take more than distance to weaken the partnership of Sampson & Cross.

Kirra Barret lives with her clan in a mining community in the Fifth Ward of Florian, a city in a human-occupied zone on planet Treaty. She is determined to have a brighter future --- and her unique connection to the planet’s flying alien beasts could be the key to improving her fortunes. In Florian’s upmarket Second Ward, Eva Fourier is offered the chance to become a secret government agent and go after criminals accumulating wealth and power on Treaty by dubious means. From different ends of Florian’s social spectrum, battle lines are drawn as Kirra and Eva’s lives intertwine in unexpected and high-stakes ways --- ways that threaten the long-standing agreement between humans and aliens on Treaty forever.

New Mexico, 1937. Painter Georgia O’Keeffe is excited for her trip to the intriguing wilderness of the Bisti Badlands. A common site for archaeological excavations, it’s a historical place with enchanting desertscapes but also perilous natural structures. Her trip is overshadowed by the sad news of her friend and native, Juan Nez, going missing. No one knows where he is, and it’s unlikely he’s gotten lost. He knows these lands like the back of his hand. Has something happened to him? And if so, was it an accident, or has a horrible crime taken place? Trying to make sense of the situation, Georgia seeks solace in her art, but soon she comes face to face with a dangerous reality and an even deadlier disaster.

Sophisticated, megarich thrill seekers drawn to a backwater system of the Confederated Worlds find more than they expected within the catacombs of a mysterious alien base: not only the anachronistic road warrior theme park where 20th-century “Old Earth” motor vehicles are raced for riches and glory, but an alien secret that has hidden within the asteroid for millennia. While the super-rich conduct business both licit and illicit, Warren Springer Stowe, self-professed acquisitions expert, and Cherry Aisha, veteran of the infamous Blue Light Brigade, become motorsport gladiators in a deadly series of high-speed clashes --- and discover treasure beyond either’s greatest imaginings.

In 1967, as the city of Newark, New Jersey, was engulfed by civil unrest after the beating of a Black cab driver by white police officers, the monks of Newark Abbey stood on the roof of the monastery and watched their city burn. In the years that followed, as crushing poverty and racial tensions in the city worsened, some of the monks voted to leave --- and St. Benedict’s Prep, the school they had run for over a century, was forced to close its doors. ON THIS GROUND is the story of the monks who voted to stay put, who would soon reopen St. Benedict’s and devote their lives to educating the students who had become their neighbors. But it’s also the inspiring story of its students who show up every day and form the beating heart of the school, which is now widely considered one of the most successful inner-city educational movements in the country.

Raymond Ambler, crime-fiction curator at New York City’s prestigious 42nd Street Library, doesn’t consider it a big deal when he misses a call from visiting professor Robin Cartwright…until she turns up dead in a hotel room. Ambler feels duty-bound to find the culprit, and not just because the police half-suspect he’s guilty of the crime. It wasn’t just Professor Cartwright’s phone call he missed, but any sign that she was in danger. Robin was researching accidental deaths she believed were murders. Could her work have gotten her killed? Soon Ambler is knee-deep in suspects, including a shady ex-husband, a slippery pastor, and at least one of his own colleagues. If he doesn’t catch a ruthless killer soon, it won’t be just his own life in danger, but also those of his partner and newborn child.

Young widow Sage Holland doesn’t look like a murderer --- and that’s because she isn’t one. The beautiful dame has driven non-stop from her home in frozen Alaska to seek out the services of private investigator Amos Walker, bringing not just the ice and snow with her. Sage has a stalker: her late husband’s vengeful brother, who’s determined to make her pay for a crime she didn’t commit. Someone killed David, but it wasn’t her. Walker knows not to take the words of husky-voiced, sorrowful women at face value. But Sage is in sore need of protection, and Walker’s hunt for clues on Detroit’s wintry streets soon leads to far more dead bodies than expected. He’ll have to use every trick he’s learned if he’s to keep not just his client’s blood, but also his own from staining the snow.