Recently Received Riveting Reads: June 2017

A magnificent new collection from award-winning author Ann Beattie, featuring recent O. Henry, Pushcart, and Best American Short Story selections. Surprising and revealing, set along the East Coast from Maine to Key West, Ann Beattie's astutely observed new collection explores unconventional friendships, frustrated loves, mortality, and aging.

1947. American Charlie St. Clair is pregnant and unmarried. She's also nursing a hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie's parents banish her to Europe, Charlie heads to London, determined to find out what happened to Rose. 1915. Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and gets her chance when she's recruited to work as a spy. Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days secluded in her London house. Until a young American barges in and launches them both on a mission to find the truth...

A routine prisoner transfer on a rural highway ends with the bus upside-down in a ravine, the driver dead of a heart attack, and convicted murderer Ernie Luntz on the loose, his eyes fixed on the mountain range in the distance, over which lies his hometown of Ash Falls. Set in a moss-draped, Pacific Northwest mountain town, Ash Falls is the story of a closely connected community both held together and torn apart by one man's single act of horrific violence.

The Whitaker family's Connecticut mansion, Muses by the Sea, has always been a haven for artists, a hotbed of creativity, extravagances, and the occasional scandal. Art patrons for generations, the Whitakers supported strangers but drained the life out of each other. Now, after being estranged for years, four generations of Whitaker women find themselves once again at The Muses. Despite storms and moonlight dancing, diva attacks and cat fights, trips to the beach and flights of fancy, these four generations of women may just find a way to save the Muses and reunite their family.

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. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children's Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents--but they quickly realize the dark truth.

The U.S. aircraft carrier patrolling the Western Pacific Ocean is severely damaged by a surprise salvo of cruise missiles. While the Russian government officially apologizes, claiming it was the result of fire control accident during a training exercise, it was instead a calculated provocation. With the U.S. Pacific fleet already severely under strength, the Russian President decides that the US response is a clear indication of their weakness, militarily and politically, and initiates a bold plan.

Priced out of their neighborhood, Jessica and Aaron move with their young daughters to the one place Jessica swore she'd never go: the suburbs. She quickly falls in with a clique of helpful mom friends who welcome her. Still, it's hard to keep up in a crowd where everyone competes for the most perfectly manicured home and latest backyard gadgets. And what's worse, as the only working mom in her circle, Jessica sometimes feels disconnected and alone. So she's thrilled when she's invited to a moms-only weekend at the beach.

Playing to packed houses while her hit song rushes up the charts, country singer and fiddler Jo Lover is poised to become a one-name Nashville star. To ensure her success, Jo has carefully crafted her image: a pretty, sassy, down-to-earth girl from small-town Virginia who pours her heart into her songs. But the stage persona she's built is threatened when her independent label merges with big-time Capitol Records, bringing Nashville heartthrob JD Gunn, her first love back into her life.

In 1949, Frank Weeks of the newly formed CIA, was exposed as a Communist spy and fled the country to vanish behind the Iron Curtain. Now, twelve years later, he has written his memoirs, a KGB- approved project almost certain to be an international bestseller, and has asked his brother Simon, a publisher, to come to Moscow to edit the manuscript. It's a reunion Simon both dreads and longs for. But the chance to see Frank, his adored older brother, proves irresistible. Once there, he finds himself dragged into the middle of Frank's new scheme, caught between the KGB and the CIA.

Arriving on the Greek island of Patmos broke and humiliated, Ian Bledsoe is fleeing the fallout from his father's death. His childhood friend Charlie--rich, exuberant, and basking in the success of his new venture on the island--could be his last hope. At first Patmos appears to be a dream--long sun-soaked days on Charlie's yacht and the reappearance of a girlfriend from Ian's past--and Charlie readily offers Ian the lifeline he so desperately needs. But, like Charlie himself, this beautiful island conceals a darkness beneath, and it isn't long before the dream begins to fragment.

The sun is shining, the sea is blue, the children have disappeared. When Liv and Nora decide to take their husbands and children on a holiday cruise, everyone is thrilled. But when they all go ashore for an adventure in Central America, a series of minor misfortunes and miscalculations leads the families farther from the safety of the ship. One minute the children are there, and the next they're gone.

Nikki lives in West London, where she tends bar at the local pub. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she's spent most of her life distancing herself from the traditional Sikh community of her childhood. When her father's death leaves the family financially strapped, Nikki takes a job teaching a "creative writing" course at the community center in London's Punjabi community. Because of a miscommunication, th Sikh widows who show up are expecting to learn basic English literacy, not the art of short-story writing. When one of the widows finds a book of sexy stories in English and shares it with the class, Nikki realizes that her students have a wealth of fantasies and memories.

An exquisitely talented young British author makes her American debut with this rapturously acclaimed historical novel, set in late nineteenth-century England, about an intellectually minded young widow, a pious vicar, and a rumored mythical serpent that explores questions about science and religion, skepticism, and faith, independence and love.

Edsel Bronfman works as a junior executive shipping clerk for an importer of Korean flatware. He lives in a seedy neighborhood and spends his free time with his spirited mother. Things happen to other people, and Bronfman knows it. Until, that is, he gets a call from operator 61217 telling him that he's won a free weekend at a beachfront condo in Destin, Florida. But there's a catch: the offer is intended for a couple, and Bronfman has only seventy-nine days to find someone to take with him.

The year is 1972, and the beaches of Los Angeles are the center of the world. Suzy Whitman has tossed her Vassar degree aside to follow her older sister into open skies and the borderless adventures of stewardessing for Grand Pacific Airlines. In Sela del Mar, California-a hedonistic beach town in the shadow of LAX-Suzy skateboards, suntans, and flies daily and nightly across the country. Suzy falls into a drug-trafficking scheme that clashes perilously with the skyjacking epidemic of the day.

Semele Cavnow appraises antiquities for an exclusive Manhattan auction house, deciphering ancient texts, and when she discovers a manuscript written in the time of Cleopatra, she knows it will be the find of her career. Its author tells the story of a priceless tarot deck, now lost to history, but as Semele delves further, she realizes the manuscript is more than it seems. Both a memoir and a prophecy, it appears to be the work of a powerful seer, describing devastating wars and natural disasters in detail thousands of years before they occurred.

A French Wedding is a delicious novel about six college friends reuniting on the coast of Brittany to celebrate one of their own's fortieth birthday. With sumptuous food and plenty of wine, the table is set for tricky romantic entanglements, fiery outbursts, and a range of secrets.

A young man's close-knit family is nearly destitute when his uncle founds a successful spice company, changing their fortunes overnight. As they move from a cramped, ant-infested shack to a larger house on the other side of Bangalore, and try to adjust to a new way of life, the family dynamic begins to shift. Allegiances realign; marriages are arranged and begin to falter; and conflict brews ominously in the background.

New York, a small town on the tip of Manhattan island, 1746. One evening in November, a handsome young stranger fresh off the boat arrives at a countinghouse door on Golden Hill Street: this is Mr. Smith, amiable, charming, yet strangely determined to keep suspicion shimmering. For in his pocket, he has what seems to be an order for a thousand pounds, a huge sum, and he won't explain why, or 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 befriend him, seduce him, arrest him; maybe even kill him?

After almost forty years in New Jersey, Catherine, Ralph, and their beloved Boston Terrier Karma are hitting the road, relocating to a serene island off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, where Catherine can work on her backhand and Ralph can hit the links. While Catherine is intrigued by their quirky neighbors, Ralph's golf-and-poker routine seems to be interrupted only by his flirtations with their zealous real estate agent. As the pair drift further apart, Catherine cannot help but sense her marriage is at risk. Then, she meets recent widower Fred at the dog park.

In the summer of 1940, ambitious young American journalist Ruby Sutton gets her big break: the chance to report on the European war as a staff writer for Picture Weekly newsmagazine in London. She jumps at the chance, for it's an opportunity not only to prove herself, but also to start fresh in a city and country that know nothing of her humble origins. But life in besieged Britain tests Ruby in ways she never imagined.

It begins with a woman fleeing through Arizona with her kids in tow, trying to escape an abusive marriage. When she's pulled over by an unsettling local sheriff, things soon go awry and she is taken into custody. Only when she gets to the station, her kids are gone. And then the cops start saying they never saw any kids with her, that if they're gone than she must have done something with them...

When the revered children's book author Mort Lear dies accidentally at his Connecticut home, he leaves his property and all its contents to his trusted assistant, Tomasina Daulair, who is moved by his generosity but dismayed by the complicated and defiant directives in his will. Tommy must try to honor Morty's last wishes while grappling with their effects on several people.

When Maine game warden Mike Bowditch is tasked with shooting invasive feral hogs that are tearing up the forest in his district, he makes a horrific discovery a dead baby buried in a shallow grave. Even more disturbing: evidence suggests the infant was the child of a young woman who was presumed to have died four years earlier after she disappeared from a group rafting trip.

Marianne is stuck in a loveless, unhappy marriage. After forty-one years, she has reached her limit, and one evening in Paris she decides to take action. Following a dramatic moment on the banks of the Seine, Marianne leaves her life behind and sets out for the coast of Brittany, also known as "the end of the world." Marianne learns it's never too late to begin the search for what life should have been all along.

After losing her sister in a devastating car accident, chef Quinn Weller is finally getting her life back on track. She appears to have it all: a loving family, a dream job in one of L.A.'s hottest eateries, and a gorgeous boyfriend dying to slip an engagement ring on her finger. So why does she feel so empty, like she's looking for a missing piece she can't find?

At last, Helena Pelletier has a loving husband, two beautiful daughters, a business that fills her days. Then she catches an emergency news announcement and realizes she was a fool to think she could ever leave her worst days behind her. Helena has a secret: she is the product of an abduction. Her mother was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and kept in a remote cabin. Helena, born two years after the abduction, loved her home in nature and her dad . . . until she learned precisely how savage a person he could be. More than twenty years later, she has buried her past so that even her husband doesn't know the truth. But now her father has escaped from prison.

Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs, the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store's overwhelmed shelves. But when Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore's upper room, Lydia's life comes unglued. 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.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness takes us on an intimate journey of many years across the Indian subcontinent--from the cramped neighborhoods of Old Delhi and the roads of the new city to the mountains and valleys of Kashmir and beyond, where war is peace and peace is war. Each of its characters is indelibly, tenderly rendered. Its heroes are people who have been broken by the world they live in and then rescued, patched together by acts of love--and by hope.

On September 15, 2008, the world of Greenwich, Connecticut, is shaken. When the investment bank Weiss & Partners is shuttered, CEO Bob D'Amico must fend off allegations of malfeasance, as well as the judgment and resentment of his community. As panic builds, five women in his life must scramble to negotiate power on their own terms and ask themselves what --if anything--is worth saving.

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? But things do go wrong, horrifically so.

Rachel Rivkin and Fiona Larkin used to treasure their summers together as campers at Camp Marigold. Now, reunited as counselors after their first year of college, their relationship is more complicated. For the first time, the two friends start keeping secrets from each other. Through them, as well as from the perspectives of their fellow counselors, their campers, and their mothers, we witness the tensions of the turbulent summer build to a tragic event, which forces Rachel and Fiona to confront their pasts--and the adults they're becoming.

General Boris Karpov, head of the feared Russian FSB, is dead. But Karpov has reached out from the grave with an unstoppable cyber operation he conceived before his murder, aimed at the heart of the United States--a way to steal the president's nuclear launch codes. Who has taken over the operation? Karpov trusted only one man: Jason Bourne. But can Bourne be working against his own country?

In the coastal town of Alden, Maine, Hope and Jack Kelly have settled down to a life of wedded bliss. They have a beautiful family, a growing lobster business, and the Salt House--the dilapidated oceanfront cottage they're renovating into their dream home. But tragedy strikes when their young daughter doesn't wake up from her afternoon nap, taking her last breath without making a sound. A year later, each member of the Kelly family navigates the world on their own private island of grief.

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one in the journalism community is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now? Regardless of why Evelyn has chosen her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Eleven-year-old Polly McClusky is shy, too old for the teddy bear she carries with her everywhere, when she is unexpectedly reunited with her father, Nate, fresh out of jail and driving a stolen car. He takes her from the front of her school into a world of robbery, violence, and the constant threat of death. And he does it to save her life. Nate made dangerous enemies in prison, a gang called Aryan Steel has put out a bounty on his head, counting on its members on the outside to finish him off.

"I very much need to be dead." These are the chilling words left behind by a man who had everything to live for--but took his own life. In the aftermath, his widow, Jane Hawk, does what all her grief, fear, and fury demand: find the truth, no matter what.

The hardscrabble Chase women--Mary, Hannah, and their mother Diane--have been eking out a living running a tiny seaside motel that has been in the family for generations. Eighteen-year-old Mary Chase is passionate, beautiful, and free-spirited. Her much younger sister, Hannah, whom Mary affectionately calls "Bunny," is imaginative, her head full of the stories of princesses and adventures that Mary tells her. But when Diane dies in a car accident, Mary discovers the motel is worth less than the back taxes they owe. With few options, the sisters begin a cross-country journey in search of a better life.

Kevin Pace is working on a painting that he won't allow anyone to see: not his children; not his best friend, Richard; not even his wife, Linda. The painting is a canvas of twelve feet by twenty-one feet (and three inches) that is covered entirely in shades of blue. It may be his masterpiece or it may not; he doesn't know or, more accurately, doesn't care. What Kevin does care about are the events of the past.

Teddy Telemachus is a charming con man with a gift for sleight of hand and some shady underground associates. In need of cash, he tricks his way into a classified government study about telekinesis and its possible role in intelligence gathering. There he meets Maureen McKinnon, and it's not just her piercing blue eyes that leave Teddy forever charmed, but her mind--Maureen is a genuine psychic of immense and mysterious power. After a whirlwind courtship, they marry, have three gifted children, and become the Amazing Telemachus Family, performing astounding feats across the country.

Jim Brodie is an antiques dealer, Japan expert, and second-generation private investigator. When two theater friends are murdered backstage at a Kennedy Center performance in Washington, DC, he's devastated--and determined to hunt down the killer. He's not the only one.

When a late life love affair blooms between Mr. Forrest Payne, the owner of the Pink Slipper Gentleman's Club, and Miss Beatrice Jordan, famous for stationing herself at the edge of the club's parking lot and yelling warnings of eternal damnation at the departing patrons, their wedding summons a legend to town. Mr. El Walker, the great guitar bluesman, comes home to give a command performance in Plainview, Indiana, a place he'd sworn--and for good reason--he'd never set foot in again. But El is not the only Plainview native with a hurdle to overcome.

Only one man stands between a powerful cabal planning an invisible coup of the U.S. government and their brutal goals--Dewey Andreas. 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.

Carmen is happily married to Tom, although she knows she'll always live in the shadow of another woman--the mistress who ended his first marriage: Zena. Mercurial, mesmerizing, manipulative Zena--a woman who, Carmen begins to discover, had the potential to incite the darkest of emotions. Zena, who drowned in the sea late one night. Zena seems ever-more present, even in death, and when Carmen unknowingly stumbles on evidence that her husband has not been telling her the whole truth, she can't shake her unease.

As a storm rages across the Mediterranean Sea, a terrifying distress call is made to the Italian Coast Guard. Days later, a body washes ashore. Identified as a high value terrorism suspect (who had disappeared three years prior), his name sends panic through the Central Intelligence Agency. Where was he headed? What was he planning? And could he be connected to the "spectacular attack" they have been fearing all summer? In a race against time, the CIA taps an unorthodox source to get answers.

Reformed party girl Meg Ashley leads a life of privilege, thanks to a bestselling horror novel her mother wrote decades ago. Desperate to break free of her mother, Meg accepts a proposal to write a scandalous, tell-all memoir. Digging into the past-and her mother's cult classic-draws Meg to Bonny Island, Georgia, and an unusual woman said to be the inspiration for the book. At first island life seems idyllic, but as Meg starts to ask tough questions, disturbing revelations come to light...including some about her mother.

It is New York, 1904, and Dulcy Remfrey, faces the predictable life of a woman of the time. All that changes when her eccentric father returns from his expedition to Africa without any of the proceeds from the sale of a gold mine. It seems he's lost his mind along with the money, and Dulcy's obsessive ex-fiance (and her father's business partner) insists she come to Seattle to decipher her father's cryptic notebooks, which may hold clues to the missing funds. When her father dies unexpectedly, Dulcy looks at her future, finds it unbearable, and somewhere in the northern Rockies disappears from the train bringing her father's body home.

After allying itself with Pakistan's intelligence services and notorious terrorist group, the Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP), ISIS is ready to achieve its ultimate dream: Forcing the US into a clash of civilizations in the Mideast. The best way to accomplish this mission is to acquire three Pakistani nukes, then set them off in three US cities.

Mary Parsons is broke. Dead broke, really: between an onslaught of medical bills and a mountain of credit card debt, she has been pushed to the brink. Hounded by bill collectors and still plagued by the painful and bizarre symptoms that doctors couldn't diagnose, Mary seeks relief from a holistic treatment called Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia--PAKing, for short. Miraculously, it works. But PAKing is prohibitively expensive. Like so many young adults trying to make ends meet in New York City, Mary scours Craigslist and bulletin boards for a second job, and eventually lands an interview for a high-paying gig that's even stranger than her symptoms or the New Agey PAKing.

Free-spirited and fiercely independent, Maggie adores her life of travel and adventure. But she has a secret. She can't let go of her first and only love, renowned architect Marco Firelli, now married to her best friend Lena. When Marco drowns in a kayaking accident, Maggie rushes to the Firelli family's summer home on San Juan Island. Once there she discovers that Marco was hiding something that could destroy his family. As fragile, perfectionistic Lena slowly falls apart, Maggie tries to provide stability for Marco and Lena's three young children.

When Cara Rutledge rents out her quaint beach house on Isle of Palms to Heather Wyatt for the entire summer, it's a win-win by any standard: Cara's generating income necessary to keep husband Brett's ecotourism boat business afloat, and anxiety-prone Heather, an young artist who's been given a commission to paint birds on postage stamps, has a quiet space in which to work and tend to her pet canaries uninterrupted. It isn't long, however, before both women's idyllic summers are altered irrevocably.

Before Everything is a celebration of friendship and love between a group of women who have known each another since they were girls. They've faced everything together, from youthful sprees and scrapes to mid-life turning points. Now, as Anna, the group's trailblazer and brightest spark, enters hospice, they gather to do what they've always done--talk and laugh and help each other make choices and plans, this time in Anna's rural Massachusetts home.

This is no accident. This is no act of God. This is Blackout. A terrifyingly plausible million-copy selling debut disaster thriller. When the lights go out one night, no one panics. Not yet. The lights always come back on soon, don't they? Surely it's a glitch, a storm, a malfunction. But something seems strange about this night. Across Europe, controllers watch in disbelief as electrical grids collapse. There is no power, anywhere.

Collin James is young, creative, and unhappy. A college dropout, he waits tables and spends his free time beautifying the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his medium of choice: chalk. Collin's art captivates passersby with its vibrant colors and intricate lines--until the moment he wipes it all away. Nothing in Collin's life is meant to last. Then he meets Nina. . . .

As an old house is demolished in a gentrifying section of London, a workman discovers a tiny skeleton, buried for years. For journalist Kate Waters, it's a story that deserves attention. She cobbles together a piece for her newspaper, but at a loss for answers, she can only pose a question: Who is the Building Site Baby?

Burdened by a dark family secret, Virginia Fortescue flees her oppressive home in New York City for the battlefields of World War I France. While an ambulance driver for the Red Cross, she meets a charismatic British army surgeon whose persistent charm opens her heart to the possibility of love. As the war rages, Virginia falls into a passionate affair with the dashing Captain Simon Fitzwilliam, only to discover that his past has its own dark secrets--secrets that will damage their eventual marriage and propel her back across the Atlantic to the sister and father she left behind.

Both Cassie Hugo and Margaret Brickshaw dutifully followed their soldier husbands to the U.S. embassy in Jordan, but that's about all the women have in common. After two years, Cassie's become an expert on the rules, but newly arrived Margaret sees only her chance to explore. So when a fender-bender sends Margaret to the local police station, Cassie reluctantly agrees to watch Margaret's toddler son. But as the hours pass, Cassie's boredom and frustration turn to fear: Why isn't Margaret answering her phone, and why is it taking so long to sort out a routine accident?

The genius of Joyce Carol Oates is on full display in her new collection of seven feverishly unsettling works,DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense. At the heart of this meticulously crafted, deeply disquieting collection are girls and women confronting the danger around them, and the danger hidden inside their turbulent selves.

Clara Solberg's world shatters when her husband and their four-year-old daughter are in a car crash, killing Nick while Maisie is remarkably unharmed. The crash is ruled an accident...until the coming days, when Maisie starts having night terrors that make Clara question what really happened on that fateful afternoon.Tormented by grief and her obsession that Nick's death was far more than just an accident, Clara is plunged into a desperate hunt for the truth. Who would have wanted Nick dead? And, more important, why?

During a heat wave in 1991, ten-year-old Anton has been locked in an apartment in the projects, alone, for seven days. Hot, hungry, and desperate, Anton shatters a window and climbs out. He is covered in blood when the police find him. Juanita, his mother, is discovered in a crack house, nearly unconscious and half-naked. She never meant to leave Anton,she went out for a quick hit and was headed right back, until her drug dealer raped her and kept her high. Anton is placed with child services while Juanita goes to jail. Judge David Coleman is desperate to have a child in the house again after the death of his teenage son. David uses his power and connections to keep his new foster son.

Beautiful, bright, and ambitious Natalie should be doing something with her life. But instead, she's stuck in a dead-end job and instead of improving her place in the world by her own efforts, takes advantage of the honesty of those around her, ultimately leaving them damaged and broken. Of course she denies responsibility, even when confronted with undeniable evidence that she is involved. So, when she sees a chance to change her life, she takes it, even if it's at the expense of someone else.

Laura Brooks fled her hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, ten years ago after a historic flood and personal heartbreak. Now she's returned and her family and friends don't know what to make of it. She says she's just home for a brief visit and her high-school reunion, but she's carrying too much luggage for that: literal and metaphorical. Soon Laura is embroiled in small-town affairs--the contentious divorce of her rowdy best friend Rose; and the renewed interest of the man Laura once thought she'd marry, Sammy McGuire.

All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop. He is "the King of Manhattan North," a, highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of "Da Force." Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, and the baddest, an elite special unit given unrestricted authority to wage war on gangs, drugs and guns. He's done whatever it takes to serve and protect in a city built by ambition and corruption, where no one is clean--including Malone himself.

Samuel Long escapes slavery in Virginia, traveling the Underground Railroad to Walden Woods where he encounters Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Lloyd Garrison, and other transcendentalists and abolitionists. While Long will experience his coming-of-age at Walden Pond, his hosts will receive a lesson in human dignity, culminating in a climactic act of civil disobedience.

Elementary school teacher Jacqueline "Jacks" Morales's marriage was far from perfect, but even in its ups and downs it was predictable, familiar. Or at least she thought it was...until two police officers showed up at her door with devastating news. Her husband of eight years, the one who should have been on a business trip to Kansas, had suffered a fatal car accident in Hawaii. And he wasn't alone.

After his mother's death, eleven-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Aunt Charlotte, otherwise a woman of few words, points out a ruined cottage, telling Marcus she had visited it regularly after she'd moved there thirty years ago because it matched the ruin of her own life. The islanders call it "Grief Cottage," because a boy and his parents disappeared from it during a hurricane fifty years before.

Roxanne MacFarlane is the Extractor--a former CIA agent who specializes in rescuing people from dangerous situations. She lives on the edge and works outside the law, but desperate families know she's the only operative who can bring their missing loved ones home. Driven by guilt over the loss of her sister to a polygamous cult, she will stop at nothing to save her clients.

It is the summer of 1992 and a gypsy moth invasion blankets Avalon Island. It is also the summer Leslie Day Marshall, only daughter of Avalon's most prominent family and their children come to live in The Castle, the island's grandest estate. Leslie's husband Jules is African-American, and their children bi-racial, and islanders from both sides of the tracks form fast and dangerous opinions about the new arrivals.

In the summer of 1999, Kit and Laura travel to a festival in Cornwall to see a total eclipse of the sun. Young and in love, they are certain this will be the first of many they'll share. But in the hushed moments after the shadow passes, Laura interrupts a man and a woman. She knows that she saw something terrible. The man denies it. It is her word against his. The victim seems grateful. Months later, she turns up on their doorstep like a lonely stray. But as her gratitude takes a twisted turn, Laura begins to wonder, did she trust the wrong person?

In 1917, Evelyn Marche is just one of many women who has been widowed by the war. A British nurse trapped in German-occupied Brussels, she spends her days working at a hospital and her nights as a waitress in her aunt and uncle's cafe. Eve also has a carefully guarded secret keeping her in constant danger: She's a spy working for a Belgian resistance group in league with the British Secret Service.

Career Day at Guadalupe Middle School: A day given to innocent hopes and youthful dreams. A day no one in attendance will ever forget. A year ago, Principal Linda McDonald arrived at Guadalupe determined to overturn the school's reputation for truancy, gang violence, and neglect. One of her initiatives is Career Day--bringing together children, teachers, and community presenters in a celebration of the future. But there are some in attendance who reject McDonald's bright vision. But no one at the gathering anticipates the shocking turn of events that will transform a day of possibilities into an explosive confrontation.

In turn-of-the-century South Africa, fourteen-year-old Lettie, her younger brother, and her mother are Dutch Afrikaner settlers who have been taken from their farm by British soldiers and are being held in a concentration camp. It is early in the Boer War, and Lettie's father, grandfather, and brother are off fighting the British as thousands of Afrikaner women and children are detained. Determined to dictate their own fate, Lettie and her family give each other strength and hope as they fight to survive amid increasingly dire conditions.

Austria, 1938. Kristoff is a young apprentice to a master Jewish stamp engraver. When his teacher disappears during Kristallnacht, Kristoff is forced to engrave stamps for the Germans, and simultaneously works alongside Elena, his beloved teacher's fiery daughter, and with the Austrian resistance to send underground messages and forge papers. As he falls for Elena amidst the brutal chaos of war, Kristoff must find a way to save her, and himself.

Alvie Knightly is a trainwreck: aimless, and pretty much constantly drunk. Alvie's existence is in contrast to that of her identical and perfect twin sister, Beth. Beth is married to a rich Italian, dotes on her baby boy, and has always been their mother's favorite. When Beth invites Alvie to visit her in Italy, she is reluctant to go. But when she gets fired from her job and her flatmates kick her out, a luxury villa in Taormina suddenly sounds appealing. Beth asks Alvie to swap places with her for just a few hours. Alvie jumps at the chance to take over her sister's life--if only temporarily. But when the night ends with Beth dead at the bottom of the pool, Alvie realizes that this is her chance to change her life.

Heather Mulgrew's world is already mapped out: she is going to travel abroad with her friends after college, come back to a great career in September, and head into a life where not much is left to chance. But that was before an encounter on an overnight train introduces her to Jack, a passionate adventurer who changes the course of her journey and her life.

Lucky and her husband, Krishna, are gay. They present an illusion of marital bliss to their conservative Sri Lankan-American families, while each dates on the side. It's not ideal, but for Lucky, it seems to be working. She goes out dancing, she drinks a bit, she makes ends meet by doing digital art on commission. But when Lucky's grandmother has a nasty fall, Lucky returns to her childhood home and unexpectedly reconnects with her former best friend and first lover, Nisha, who is preparing for her own arranged wedding with a man she's never met.

Robert and Irene Kelly were a golden couple of the late '70s--she an artist, he a businessman. But with two young boys to care for, Irene finds herself confined by the very things she'd dreamed of having. And Robert, pressured by Irene's demands and haunted by the possibility of failure, risks the family business to pursue a fail-safe real estate opportunity. Twenty years later, their now-grown sons, Nathan and Andrew, are drawn back to confront a fateful diagnosis. As they revisit the Cape Cod of their childhood, the ghosts of the past threaten to upend the tenuous peace of the present.

Relationships are awful. They'll kill you, right up to the point where they start saving your life. Paul and Alice's half-sister Eloise is getting married! In London! There will be fancy hotels, dinners at "it" restaurants and a reception at a country estate complete with tea lights and embroidered cloth napkins. They couldn't hate it more.

Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota. Two Native American cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson, though bound by blood and by land, find themselves at odds as they grapple with the implications of their shared heritage. When escalating anger toward the injustices, historical and current, inflicted upon the Lakota people by the federal government leads to tribal divisions and infighting, the cousins go in separate directions: Rick chooses the path of peace; You Choose, violence.

Thaddeus Kaufman, the son of booksellers, and Grace Cornell, raised in a basement apartment she longs to escape, meet at a neighborhood art fair in Chicago. Soon after, they head to New York, aloft on the wings of young love. Jennings Stratton, the son of a caretaker, and Muriel Sanchez, the daughter of a cop, meet in a house he is refurbishing in New Mexico, and they, too, head for the big city. In a vast Hudson River estate, the lives of the two couples ultimately intertwine.

One summer day on the beach in Florida, two extraordinary things happen to Maeve Donnelly. First, she is kissed by Daniel, the boy of her dreams. Then, she is bitten by a blacktip shark. Eighteen years later, Maeve has thrown herself into her work as a world-traveling marine biologist discovering more about the minds of misunderstood sharks. But when Maeve returns home, she finds more than just the blood orange sunsets and key lime pies she's missed waiting for her.

A dazzling new series, a pure adrenaline rush, debuts with Jane Hawk, a remarkable heroine certain to become an icon of suspense "I very much need to be dead." These are the chilling words left behind by a man who had everything to live for--but took his own life. In the aftermath, his widow, Jane Hawk, does what all her grief, fear, and fury demand: find the truth, no matter what.

In the vein of Richard Russo and Tom Perrotta, a gripping, suspenseful, and gorgeous debut novel--told hour-by-hour over the course of a single day--in which a husband and wife try to outrun long-buried secrets, sending their lives spiraling into chaos.

Stephen Florida follows a college wrestler in his senior season, when every practice, every match, is a step closer to greatness and a step further from sanity. Profane, manic, and tipping into the uncanny, it's a story of loneliness, obsession, and the drive to leave a mark.

Warren Botts is a disillusioned Ph.D., taking a break from his lab to teach middle-school science. Gentle, soft-spoken, and lonely, he innocently befriends Amanda, one of his students. But one morning, Amanda is found dead in his backyard, and Warren, shocked, flees the scene. As the small community slowly turns against him, an anonymous narrator, a person of extreme intelligence and emotional detachment, offers insight into events past and present.

When Sue Glassman's family needs a new home, Sue relents, after years of resisting, and agrees to convert to Judaism. In return, Sue's father-in-law, Sy, buys the family--Sue, Dan, and their two daughters--a capacious but ramshackle beachfront house in Rockaway, Queens, a world away from the Glassmans' cramped Tribeca apartment. The catch? Sy is moving in, too. And the house is haunted.

Michael Tanner is on his way home from a business trip when he accidentally picks up the wrong MacBook in an airport security line. He doesn't notice the mix-up until he arrives home in Boston, but by then it's too late. Tanner's curiosity gets the better of him when he discovers that the owner is a US senator and that the laptop contains top secret files. When Senator Susan Robbins realizes she's come back with the wrong laptop, she calls her young chief of staff, Will Abbott, in a panic.

Former U.S. Senator Weston Rhodes is a defense contractor with an urgent problem. His company needs someone to look over the books of Dalfan Technologies, a Singapore company--quickly. He turns to his old friend Gerry Hendley for help. Hendley Associates is one of the best financial analysis firms in the country and the cover for The Campus, a top-secret American intelligence agency. Rhodes asks for two specific analysts, Jack Ryan Jr., and Paul Brown, a mild-mannered forensic accountant. Both Ryan and Brown initially resist, for different reasons.

Caitlin Hendrix has been a Narcotics detective for six months when the killer at the heart of all her childhood nightmares reemerges: the Prophet. An UNSUB--what the FBI calls an unknown subject--the Prophet terrorized the Bay Area in the 1990s and nearly destroyed her father, the lead investigator on the case. Twenty years later, two bodies are found bearing the haunting signature of the Prophet. But now the ruthless madman is killing again and has set his sights on her.

In these acrid and poignant stories, Hughes depicted black people colliding--sometimes humorously, more often tragically--with whites in the 1920s and '30s.

Set in London of the 1660s and the twenty-first century, this is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history. As the novel opens, Helen has been summoned to view a cache of newly discovered seventeenth-century Jewish documents Enlisting the help of an American graduate student, and in a race with another fast-moving team of historians, Helen embarks on one last project: to determine the identity of the documents' scribe, the elusive Aleph.

Objectively, Sophie is a success: she's got a coveted job at a top consulting firm, a Manhattan apartment, and a passport full of stamps. It isn't quite what she dreamed of when she was a teenager dog-earing pages in exotic travel guides, but it's secure. Then her best friend bails just hours after they arrive in Hong Kong for a girls' trip, and Sophie meets Carson, a free-spirited, globetrotting American artist. In the midst of their whirlwind vacation romance, Carson invites Sophie to join him on his haphazard journey around the world.

For the past thirty years, Mr. and Mrs. Jha's lives have been defined by cramped spaces, cut corners, gossipy neighbors, and the small dramas of stolen yoga pants and stale marriages. They thought they'd settled comfortably into their golden years. But then Mr. Jha comes into an enormous and unexpected sum of money, and moves his wife from their housing complex in East Delhi to the super-rich side of town, where he becomes eager to fit in as a man of status. His move sets off a chain of events that rock their neighbors, their marriage, and their son.

Paul Reeves is a successful immigration lawyer, but his passion is collecting old maps of New York, tangible records of the city's rich history in an increasingly digital world. One afternoon he attends an auction with his neighbor Jennifer Mehraz, the beautiful young wife of an Iranian financier-lawyer, but halfway through the auction a handsome man in soldier fatigues appears in the aisle and whisks Jennifer away.

Seven-year-old Lissie Woodham and her four-year-old sister Janey were playing with their porcelain dolls in the front yard when an adorable puppy scampered by. Eager to pet the pretty dog, Lissie chased after the pup as it ran down the street. When she returned to the yard, Janey's precious doll was gone . . . and so was Janey.