Adult

At Naysay Inc., Megan’s job is to whisper negative thoughts straight into the minds of clients in the Real World. It’s all in a day’s dirty work in Naysayland, the parallel reality where your negativity is manufactured and self-doubt is a commodity. But when she is assigned to sabotage a romance between lifestyle influencer Lily and author Jasper, Megan’s carefully constructed reality begins to unravel. The project teams her with Ben, the smug but cute whisperer in the next cubicle. As they work to tear down Lily and Jasper’s situationship, Megan and Ben are catching feelings for each other. As their empathy grows, and they start rooting for the relationship they’re tasked with destroying, dreaded HR is sniffing around. Now they’re facing a choice: keep crushing dreams for a paycheck, or risk everything for their own fairy tale.

Seventeen-year-old Jean, a troubled Jewish boy caught in the countercultural swirl of 1970s London, arrives at Compton Manor, a rural alternative boarding school for boys with “problems.” Dyslexic, antisocial and prone to violent outbursts, Jean has never made friends easily, and school has never been a place of safety or enjoyment. All of a sudden, he is befriended by Tom --- confident, charming, buoyed by years of good breeding and privilege --- and it seems as if Jean’s world might change. When things turn romantic, Jean is tipped into a heady, overwhelming infatuation. Now Jean skips class to venture into the woods, or sneaks across moonlit fields to see Tom, wondering if the relationship might offer a way out of a life marked by alienation. But what if the only true path to freedom is to disappear altogether?

The Bloodaxe Crew have arrived at the village of Istré --- beleaguered and missing three of their members. They might be down in numbers, but Hekla “Rib Smasher” is determined they’ll complete their job all the same: defeat the monstrous, sentient mist and keep the citizens of Istré safe. What she didn’t expect is for Istré’s bullheaded chieftain to block her every move. Exasperated, Hekla throws caution to the wind for a single passion-filled night. But to her horror, the mysterious red-cloaked warrior to whom she’s spilled her deepest secrets is the Bloodaxe Crew’s new temporary leader and ally --- Eyvind Hakonsson. Hekla must now learn to play by Eyvind’s rules while guarding her heart. But when it becomes clear that his plans align with the chieftain’s, Hekla takes matters into her own hands.

Poppy Peterson is thriving as the publicist of the NFL’s most promising quarterback (and her childhood best friend), Cash Curran. So she doesn’t appreciate when he makes an impulsive and public pass at America’s popstar darling, Lyric Adair. When Lyric’s notorious publicist, Rosaline Sinclair, reaches out, Poppy is ready to face her wrath but instead learns that Lyric is equally interested. As Cash and Lyric embark on their il, l-advised whirlwind romance, Poppy and Rosaline are forced together, each determined to protect their own client from the other. Poppy is frustrated by Rosaline’s cool demeanor yet is determined to impress her. But no matter what she does, she can’t shake the feeling that Rosaline doesn’t like her.  That is until one steamy night, when the two women contend with their unexpected feelings and begin a messy romance of their own.

For two decades, Del and Dinah Newman and their sons, Guy and Shep, have ruled television as America’s Favorite Family. Millions of viewers tune in every week to watch them play flawless, black-and-white versions of themselves. But now it’s 1964, and the Newmans’ idealized apple-pie perfection suddenly feels woefully out of touch. Ratings are in free fall, as are the Newmans themselves. Del is keeping an explosive secret from his wife, and Dinah is slowly going numb --- literally. Steady, stable Guy is hiding the truth about his love life, and the charmed luck of rock ‘n’ roll idol Shep may have finally run out. When Del is in a mysterious car accident, Dinah hires Juliet Dunne, an outspoken, impassioned young reporter, to help her write the final episode. But Dinah and Juliet have wildly different perspectives about what it means to be a woman, and a family, in 1964.

Nobody at the corporate offices of Athletius Japan knows much about the massage therapist Jackson. But rumors abound. He used to work as a model. He likes to party. He’s mixed race --- half-Japanese, half-somewhere-in-Africa-n. He might be gay. Fueling the gossip is the sudden appearance of a violent pornographic video featuring a man who looks a lot like Jackson. When Jackson serendipitously meets three other queer mixed-race guys, he learns he’s not the only one being targeted. Together they concoct a plan: find out who’s responsible and, in the meantime, switch identities and play tricks on people --- a boyfriend, a boss --- who’ve wronged them, exploiting the fact that nobody can seem to tell them apart.

With River Valley Hospital in the midst of negotiations to avert a nurses' strike, a wealthy benefactor is set to give a large donation in honor of the Chief of Emergency Medicine: Dr. Elliott Chin, the brother of private investigator Lydia Chin. Before the donation can be finalized, a member of the nurses' negotiating committee is found murdered. A morgue assistant is arrested, and his father and brother, both doctors at the hospital, are quick to urge him to take a plea. Another negotiating committee member abruptly resigns, and a senior biomedical technician disappears. An officially off-limits section of the hospital basement turns out to be a hotbed of unauthorized --- and, in some cases, criminal --- activity. Hired by the arrested man's lawyer, Lydia Chin and her partner, Bill Smith, start to dig into the events and personnel at the hospital.

One of the riskiest air raids of World War II occurred on August 1, 1943, over the oil fields at Ploesti, Romania --- Nazi Germany’s primary fuel source. The Allies believed that the destruction of Hitler’s oil refineries would shorten the war. Using an untested strategy, it was worth the gamble, but the mission did not go according to plan. With 53 aircraft and 532 crewmen lost, it was the costliest US air raid of the war. A true story, THE NAVIGATOR'S LETTER is a tale of uncanny coincidences: two friends from the same small Illinois town; both joined the Air Corps; both became navigators; both were assigned to B-24 Liberators; both flew missions over Europe; both of their planes were forced down over Ploesti; and both went missing in action.

When April and Leo’s house burns in the middle of the night, they escape with their two young children. They retreat to April’s childhood home in Dallas, where her spirited parents and siblings provide both comfort and complication. As the family reckons with the aftermath, the fire exposes the cracks already forming in April and Leo’s marriage. The novel unfolds in alternating perspectives: from April, who feels the crushing weight of motherhood, marriage and self-blame; from Leo, a high school history teacher shaped by a lonely, fractured childhood; from Deb, April’s generous and no-nonsense mother who has to contend with her husband’s recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis; and from flashbacks that trace April and Leo’s relationship from its earliest days of connection to the devastating decisions that led them here.

Two years ago, a small plane disappeared over Fiji. For Erin, it’s been two years of obsessing over every detail, refusing to move forward even as life does. Her sister, Lori, was on that plane, and Erin was meant to be, too. But after a bitter argument, she failed to show. Everyone thinks Lori is dead, but Erin can’t let go. Just when Erin is on the verge of losing hope, the pilot of the missing plane turns up still in Fiji, seemingly with no memory of the crash. In a final bid to find her sister, Erin travels there herself. But what she discovers is beyond anything she could have predicted.