Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother. As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared. But as Hannah and Bailey start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they’re also building a new future—one neither of them could have anticipated.
Lily’s come a long way from the small town where she grew up—she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. When she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place. As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan—her first love and a link to the past she left behind. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.
When Stephanie Plum is woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of footsteps in her apartment, she finds out the intruder is fellow apprehension agent Diesel, six feet of hard muscle and bad attitude who she hasn’t seen in more than two years. Turns out Diesel and Stephanie are on the trail of the same fugitive: Oswald Wednesday, an international computer hacker as brilliant as he is ruthless. Stephanie may not be the most technologically savvy sleuth, but she more than makes up for that with her dogged determination, her understanding of human nature, and her willingness to do just about anything to bring a fugitive to justice. Unsure if Diesel is her partner or her competition in this case, she’ll need to watch her back every step of the way as she sets the stage to draw Wednesday out from behind his computer and into the real world.
Harry Booth started stealing at nine to keep a roof over his ailing mother's head, slipping into luxurious, empty homes at night to find items he could trade for precious cash. When his mother finally succumbed to cancer, he left Chicago--but kept up his nightwork. Wandering from the Outer Banks to Savannah to New Orleans, he dons new identities and stays careful. He can't help letting his guard down when he meets Miranda Emerson. But the powerful bond between them cannot last--because not all thieves follow Harry's code of honor. After Harry takes a lucrative job commissioned by Carter LaPorte, LaPorte strongarms Harry into robbing a Baltimore museum. Harry abandons Miranda--cruelly, with no explanation--and disappears. But no matter what name he uses or where he goes, LaPorte casts a shadow over Harry's life. To truly free himself, he must face down his enemy once and for all.
For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life—until the unthinkable happens.
Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity's notes and outlines. What Lowen doesn't expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read with Verity's recollection of the night her family was forever altered. As Lowen's feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife's words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue loving her.
The woman’s body was found in the early morning, on a bench in a New York City playground with her hair neatly arranged, her makeup carefully applied. But other things were very wrong—like the tattoo and piercings, clearly new, the fatal wound hidden beneath a ribbon around her neck, and the note: Bad Mommy, written in crayon as if by a child. Eve Dallas turns to the department’s top profiler, who confirms what seems obvious to Eve: They’re dealing with a killer whose childhood involved some sort of trauma. Yet the clues suggest a perpetrator who’d be roughly sixty years old, and there are no records of old crimes with a similar MO. When Eve discovers that other young women—who physically resemble the first victim—have vanished, the clock starts ticking louder.
Texas, 1921. America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to marry a man she barely knows. By 1934, drought has devastated the Great Plains. Everything on the Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa’s tenuous marriage; each day is a desperate battle against nature and a fight to keep her children alive. In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life for her family.
Wilde has returned to the Ramapo Mountains. Suddenly, a DNA match on an online ancestry database finally gives Wilde the opening he needs to track down his father. But meeting the man brings up more questions than answers. So Wilde reaches out to his last, most desperate lead, a second cousin who disappears as quickly as he resurfaces, having experienced an epic fall from grace that can only be described as a waking nightmare. Was his cousin's downfall a long time coming or was he the victim of a conspiracy? How does it all connect to the man once known as The Stranger, a treacherous fugitive with a growing following whose mission and methods have only turned more dangerous with time?
As Chicago PD's special-ops leader, Detective Billy Harney knows well that money is not the only valuable currency. The filthy rich man he's investigating is down to his last twenty million. He's also being held in jail. For now. Billy's unit is called in when an escape plan results in officers down and inmates vanished. In an empty lot, Billy spots two Kevlar vests. Two helmets. Two assault rifles. And a handwritten note: Hi, Billy Are you having fun yet?
Aloysius Archer is in Los Angeles to ring in the 1953 New Year with aspiring actress Liberty Callahan, when their evening is interrupted by Eleanor Lamb, a screenwriter in dire straits. After a series of increasingly chilling events, Eleanor fears that her life is in danger, and she wants to hire Archer to look into the matter. Archer suspects that Eleanor knows more than she's saying, but before he can officially take on her case, a dead body turns up inside of Eleanor's home, and Eleanor herself disappears. With the help of Callahan and his partner Willie Dash, he launches an investigation that will take him from mob-ridden Las Vegas to the glamorous world of Hollywood to the darkest corners of Los Angeles, where the powerful people responsible for his client's disappearance will kill without a moment's hesitation if they catch Archer on their trail.
Lacy Stoltz is tired of her work for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct and ready for a change. Then she meets a mysterious woman who is so frightened she uses a number of aliases. Jeri Crosby's father was murdered twenty years earlier in a case that remains unsolved and that has grown stone cold. But Jeri has a suspect whom she has become obsessed with and has stalked for two decades. The man is brilliant, patient, and always one step ahead of law enforcement. He knows forensics, police procedure, and the law. He is a judge, in Florida--under Lacy's jurisdiction. He has a list, with the names of his victims and targets, all unsuspecting people unlucky enough to have crossed his path and wronged him in some way. How can Lacy pursue him, without becoming the next name on his list?
Every day without fail, Travis Devine puts on a cheap suit, grabs his faux-leather briefcase, and boards the 6:20 commuter train to Manhattan, where he works as an entry-level analyst at the city's most prestigious investment firm. Then one morning Devine's tedious routine is shattered by an anonymous email: She is dead. Sara Ewes, Devine's coworker and former girlfriend, has been found hanging in a storage room of his office building--presumably a suicide, at least for now--prompting the NYPD to come calling on him. Devine then receives another ominous visit, a confrontation that threatens to dredge up grim secrets from his past in the army unless he participates in a clandestine investigation into his firm. Apart from this high-stakes conspiracy, there's a killer out there with their own agenda, and Devine is the bull's-eye.
Diana O'Toole is perfectly on track to be married by thirty, done having kids by thirty-five, and moved out to the New York City suburbs, all while climbing the professional ladder in the cutthroat art auction world. She's not engaged just yet, but she knows her boyfriend, Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose on their romantic getaway to the Galápagos--days before her thirtieth birthday. But then a virus that felt worlds away has appeared in the city, and Finn breaks the news: He has to stay behind at the hospital. You should still go, he assures her. Reluctantly, she goes. Almost immediately, Diana's dream vacation goes awry. The whole island is now under quarantine, and she is stranded until the borders reopen. Slowly, she carves out a connection with a local family when a teenager with a secret opens up to Diana, despite her father's suspicion of outsiders.
In "Homecoming," Jake Brigance is back, but he's not in the courtroom. He's called upon to help an old friend, Mack Stafford, who stole money from his clients, divorced his wife, filed for bankruptcy, and left his family in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again--until now. His homecoming does not go as planned. In "Strawberry Moon," we meet Cody Wallace, a young death row inmate only three hours away from execution. His lawyers can't save him, the courts slam the door, and the governor says no to a last-minute request for clemency. As the clock winds down, Cody has one final request. The "Sparring Partners" are the Malloy brothers, Kirk and Rusty, two successful young lawyers who inherited a once prosperous firm when its founder, their father, was sent to prison. Kirk and Rusty loathe each other. As the firm disintegrates, the resulting fiasco falls into the lap of Diantha Bradshaw, the only person the partners trust. Can she save the Malloys, or does she take a stand for the first time in her career and try to save herself?
This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of a butler named Stevens. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the great gentleman, Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's greatness, and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.
On his first night with Detroit PD, Officer Walter O'Brien is called to a murder scene. A terrified twenty-year-old has bludgeoned her kidnapper with skill that shocks even O'Brien's veteran partner. The young woman is also a brilliant escape artist. Her bold flight from police custody makes the case impossible to solve--and, for Walter, even more impossible to forget. By the time Walter's promoted to detective, his fascination with the missing, gray-eyed woman is approaching obsession. And when Walter discovers that he's not alone in his search, one truth is certain. This deadly string of secrets didn't begin in his home city--but he's going to make sure it ends there.
A serial killer is roaming the streets of London, and Daniel Pitt's university chum Ian, now a member of the police, is leading the search. The murders happen on rainy nights, but Ian knows the victims must have something in common beyond the weather. He turns to Miriam fford Croft, Daniel's good friend and now officially one of the first female pathologists in London, to tap her scientific know-how to find details he and Daniel have missed. With Miriam involved in the murder investigation, Ian passes Daniel the case of Nicholas Wolford, their former university professor. Charged with assault after reacting violently to an accusation of plagiarism, Wolford, a proud, boastful man, is loath to admit he was in the wrong as the murders continue with no clue as to who is committing themIs the "Rainy-day Slasher," as the newspapers have dubbed the killer, really just one person? Or have the investigators stumbled into a more complicated web of deceit?
Winter has come to North Carolina and, with it, a drop in crime. Freed from a heavy work schedule, Tempe Brennan is content to dote on her daughter Katy, finally returned to civilian life from the army. But when mother and daughter meet at Tempe’s place one night, they find a box on the back porch. Inside: a very fresh human eyeball. GPS coordinates etched into the eyeball lead to a Benedictine monastery where an equally macabre discovery awaits. Soon after, Tempe examines a mummified corpse in a state park, and her anxiety deepens.
There seems to be no pattern to the subsequent killings uncovered, except that each mimics in some way a homicide that a younger Tempe had been called in to analyze. Who or what is targeting her, and why?
Helping Tempe search for answers is detective Erskine “Skinny” Slidell, retired but still volunteering with the CMPD cold case unit—and still displaying his gallows humor. Also pulled into the mystery: Andrew Ryan, Tempe’s Montreal-based beau, now working as a private detective. Tempe is at a loss to establish the motive for what is going on…and then her daughter disappears.
Dr. Alex Cross and Detective John Sampson venture into the rugged Montana wilderness--where they will be the prey. They're not on the job, but on a personal mission. Until they're attacked by two rival teams of assassins, controlled by the same mastermind who has stalked Alex and his family for years. Darkness falls. The river churns into rapids. Shots ring out through the forest. No backup. No way out. Fear no evil.
Lost something? Gabriela Rose knows how to get it back. As a recovery agent, she’s hired by individuals and companies seeking lost treasures, stolen heirlooms, or missing assets of any kind. But Gabriela’s latest job isn’t for some bamboozled billionaire, it’s for her own family, whose home is going to be wiped off the map if they can’t come up with a lot of money fast. Inspired by an old family legend, Gabriela sets off for the jungles of Peru in pursuit of the Ring of Solomon and the lost treasure of Lima. But this particular job comes with a huge problem attached to it—Gabriela’s ex-husband, Rafer. It’s Rafer who has the map that possibly points the way to the treasure, and he’s not about to let Gabriela find it without him. Rafer is as relaxed as Gabriela is driven, and he has a lifetime’s experience getting under his ex-wife’s skin. But when they aren’t bickering about old times the two make a formidable team, and it’s going to take a team to defeat the vicious drug lord who has also been searching for the fabled ring.
As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees. That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding...six-pack abs. Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.
Every song tells a story. She's a star on the rise, singing about the hard life behind her. She's also on the run. Find a future, lose a past. Nashville is where she's come to claim her destiny. It's also where the darkness she's fled might find her. And destroy her.
After serving five years in prison for a tragic mistake, Kenna Rowan returns to the town where it all went wrong, hoping to reunite with her four-year-old daughter. Everyone in her daughter's life is determined to shut Kenna out, no matter how hard she works to prove herself. The only person who hasn't closed the door on her completely is Ledger Ward, a local bar owner and one of the few remaining links to Kenna's daughter. But if anyone were to discover how Ledger is slowly becoming an important part of Kenna's life, both would risk losing the trust of everyone important to them. The two form a connection despite the pressure surrounding them, but as their romance grows, so does the risk. Kenna must find a way to absolve the mistakes of her past in order to build a future out of hope and healing.
Maggie Atwood and Becky McCabe, mother and daughter, both champion riders, vowed to never, ever, go up against one another. Until the tense, harrowing competitions leading to the Paris Olympics. Mother and daughter share a dream: to be the best horsewoman in the world. Coronado is Maggie's horse. An absolutely top-tier Belgian warmblood. Sky is Becky's horse. A small, speedy Dutch warmblood.
Margaret Yoder can't seem to catch a break. Even though she's dedicated to her Amish faith, her wild rumspringa won't stay in the past, and her mother keeps pressuring her to get married. To placate her mother and get away from former "friends", she decides to return to Birch Creek to visit family--and pretend to find a husband. Like Margaret, Owen Bontrager isn't looking for a spouse, something that's hard to avoid in Birch Creek, where an ad for brides in the local paper has brought a swarm of single women to the thriving town. When he meets Margaret in an unexpected way, they discover they have more in common than they ever expected. In some ways, they are a perfect match. Can Margaret betray her feelings for Owen and become a dutiful daughter and wife to a man of her mother's choosing? Or will Owen find a way to free Margaret of her past by giving her the future they both are surprised to find they desire?
THE GREAT GATSBY is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream.