Coming Soon

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling and young --- young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In AUDITION, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day --- partner, parent, creator, muse --- and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.

When Hester is diagnosed with terminal cancer on her 40th birthday, she knows immediately what she must do: abandon her possessions and drive to California to kill her estranged father. With no friends or family tying her to the life she’s built in New York City, she quits her wildly lucrative job in corporate law and starts driving west. She hasn’t made it far when she runs into John, an environmental activist in need of a ride to different superfund sites across the United States. From five-star Midwestern hotels to cultish Southwestern compounds, the two slowly make their way across the country. But will the revelations they experience along the way dissuade Hester from her goal?

Thad and Hazen live off the grid, struggling with debt after the death of their father. Thad, the elder brother, is the capable one, while Hazen is a dreamer, more in tune with the wilderness than with people. Then a shadowy out-of-towner called the Scot appears --- dressed in a kilt and with a mysterious young woman in tow. He makes the brothers a proposition that is both lucrative and a federal crime --- removing resources from Yellowstone National Park, a scheme that becomes more appealing when their long-gone mother shows up, raising troubling questions about the past.

Pauline, a young chambermaid who works at the legendary Mapes Hotel in Reno, Nevada, is asked to step in for a colleague and clean Suite 614. Although she was told the rooms were empty, a dazed, sleepy woman appears before her. This is Mrs. Miller, aka Marilyn Monroe, whose stay in Reno coincides with the breakdown of her marriage to Arthur Miller and the filming of what was to be her last film, The Misfits. Set in the American West in 1960 where the mustang horses run wild, an unexpected friendship unfolds between the most famous movie star in the world and a young cleaning woman whose life will be changed forever through the course of a few weeks.

On a cool early-autumn evening in 1956, a glittering array of stars turns out in London for a Royal Film Premiere, where they will be presented to Queen Elizabeth II --- an elegant young mother and wife who has embraced her patriotic duty despite never expecting to take the throne so soon. Cameras flash, and a crowd surges forward as a limousine pulls up. Out steps a vision in dazzling gold: the greatest star of the era, Marilyn Monroe. She's a global sensation and money-making machine for Hollywood, with curves that drive men wild and a smile that lets women know she’s in on the joke. Finally, the two most famous women in the world will come face to face in public for the first time. And the world is watching --- unaware that Elizabeth and Marilyn have already had an accidental encounter that has changed their lives.

A group of friends gather at an Airbnb on New Year’s Eve. It is Benjamin’s birthday, and his sister, Abigail, is throwing him a jazz-age Murder Mystery-themed party. As the night plays out, champagne is drunk, hors d’oeuvres consumed and relationships forged, consolidated or frayed. Someone kisses the wrong person; someone else’s heart is broken. In the morning, all of them wake up --- except Benjamin. As Abigail attempts to wrap her mind around her brother’s death, an eminent detective arrives determined to find Benjamin's killer. In this mansion, suddenly complete with a butler, gardener and housekeeper, everyone is a suspect, and nothing is quite as it seems. Will the culprit be revealed? And how can Abigail piece herself back together in the wake of this loss?

Thayer Wren, the brilliant CEO of Wrenfare Magitech, is dead. Any one of his three children would be a plausible inheritor to the Wrenfare throne. Or so they would like to think. Meredith, the head of her own groundbreaking biotech company, has recently cured mental illness. If only her father's fortune wasn't her last hope for keeping her journalist ex-boyfriend from exposing what she really is: a total fraud. Arthur, the second-youngest congressman in history, fights the good fight every day of his life. Yet his wife might be leaving him, and he's losing his re-election campaign. But his dead father’s approval just might turn his sinking ship around. Eilidh has spent the last five years as a marketing executive after a life-altering injury put an end to her prodigious ballet career. If her father left her everything, it finally would validate her worth.

Present day: Annie Adams is just settling into life in Castle Knoll when local fortune teller Peony Lane shares a cryptic message only hours before being found dead inside the locked Gravesdown Estate. Annie has no choice but to delve into the dark secrets of her new countryside home in order to find out just what Peony Lane was trying to warn her about. 1967: Teenage Frances Adams, Annie’s great aunt, finds herself caught between two men. Ford Gravesdown is one of the only remaining members of a family known for its wealth and dubious uses of power. Archie Foyle is a local who can’t hold down a job and lives above the village pub. But when Frances teams up with Archie to investigate the car crash that killed most of Ford's family, it quickly becomes clear that this was no accident.

The newly nameless narrator of MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING has rejected the gender binary, has flamed out with a vengeance at their corporate gig, is most likely brain damaged from a major tussle with their now ex-boyfriend, and is on a bender to end all benders. A call from their mother with the news that their MAGA-friendly, conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing launches the narrator from Chicago to deep red Arkansas in a stolen car. Along the way, the narrator and their new bestie --- a self-proclaimed "garbage goth" with her own emotional baggage (and someone on her tail) --- unpack the narrator’s childhood and a recent personal loss that they refuse to face head-on.

In the wake of her debut novel’s breakout success --- and a very painful public divorce --- Charlotte Williams-Jackson has something to prove. With her second novel overdue, she’s scrambling to hold it together. But her focus is rocked when she discovers that she has a tween half-sister who's been orphaned in Italy. Alongside her best friend, Sloane, and Sloane’s charming brother, Julian, Charlotte ventures to the Amalfi Coast to meet her sister. But between her looming deadline and her entire identity being flipped upside down, it’s a lot. Determined to rebuild her life, Charlotte must confront the relationships she’s held dear --- and the loss of those she thought she had but didn't --- forcing her to question everything she understood about herself and the bonds that shape a family.

At 40, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of immigrants only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for 20 years returns to haunt him. Ann, his mother, who runs a women's retreat center she founded after leaving his father, is hurt by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built. She long ago put behind her the decision that divided her from her son. But as Peter’s case plunges him further into the fraught memory of his first love and the night of violence that changed his life, he and his mother must confront the secret that tore them apart.

On the night of Easter Eve 1989, 12-year-old Hanna’s older brother, Erik, and some friends go to the infamous Mount Verity, where there is a cave that, according to legend, was used in the witch trials in Östergötland during the 17th century. Rumor has it that whoever does not tell the truth and goes down into the cave will disappear into the mountain. Erik never comes home that night. Over the years, Hanna and her childhood friend, Marcus, develop an increasingly symbiotic relationship, until life takes them in different directions. When Hanna finally becomes a successful artist, she cannot let go of what it has cost her. What justice decided that she was allowed to live while Erik vanished? What is there left to believe in when the worst has happened? And can the story of Mount Verity be more than a fable?

Jessica Fletcher has taken a nasty spill on the ice, leaving her in a wheelchair for several weeks. She tries to work on her latest manuscript but finds herself distracted by a new neighbor moving in across the street. Soon after unpacking his sparse belongings, Mr. Rymer is out in the front yard, building somewhat risqué (read: naked) snow sculptures. While Cabot Cove debates if the sculptures are a protected form of art or a public display of lewdness, someone starts destroying them at night. Rymer doesn’t seem upset. He just makes new ones. No need to get the police involved over a little snow, he says. Especially when there’s plenty more of it and a blizzard in the forecast. The morning after the storm, Jessica looks out the window to see a new sculpture across the street --- and the body of Mr. Rymer half-buried in the snow.

Ursula, Alvin, Jen and Duncan grew up as cousins in the sprawling Nguyen family. As young adults, they’re on the precipice of new ventures. But their lives are upended when a series of violent, senseless attacks across America creates a national panic, prompting a government policy that pushes Vietnamese Americans into internment camps. Jen and Duncan are sent with their mother to Camp Tacoma, while Ursula and Alvin receive exemptions. Cut off entirely from the outside world, Jen and Duncan try to withstand long, dusty days in camp and acclimate to life without the internet. That is, until Jen discovers a way to get messages to the outside. Her first instinct is to reach out to Ursula, who sees this connection as a chance to tell the world about the horrors of camp --- and as an opportunity to bolster her own reporting career in the process.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell has been “exiled” to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found weighed down at the bottom of the harbor --- a Jane Doe identifiable at first only by a streak of purple dye in her hair. At the same time, a report of poaching on a protected reserve turns into a case fraught with violence and danger as Stilwell digs into the shady past of an island bigwig. Crossing all lines of protocol and jurisdiction, Stilwell doggedly works both cases.

During the week, Linda earns $20 an hour moderating comments for a video-sharing platform, and then rides the bus home to the windowless garage she rents on the outskirts of San Francisco. But on the last Friday of each month, she indulges her true passion, taking BART to SFO for a round-trip flight to a regional hub. The destination is irrelevant, because each trip means a new date with a handsome stranger --- a stranger whose intelligent windscreens, sleek fuselages and powerful engines make Linda feel a way that no human ever could. Linda knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes. Nor can she reveal her belief that it’s her destiny to “marry” one of her suitors, uniting with her soulmate plane for eternity. But then an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control.

When a levee collapses in Hinowah, a small town in Northern California, Colter Shaw is brought on by his sister, Dorion, a disaster response specialist, to help locate a family swept away by the raging water, with mere hours to survive. But after a surprise attack along the river obstructs Colter's urgent search, the siblings are forced to consider a new reality: Is the levee at risk of failing from natural causes, or is someone sabotaging it? Colter and Dorion must race against a ticking clock to uncover the truth and save the citizens before the village washes out completely, destroying everything and everyone in its path.

Audrey and Fraser tumble into a romance for the ages. After an unlikely start, they fall deeply in love and dream of the life they’ll build together --- until one tragic moment upends everything. Facing the unimaginable and wrestling with guilt, they’re left haunted by “what ifs,” each asking where they would be if fate had spun a different story.

Louise is a woman in her early 30s with a record contract, colorful roommates, and a passionate, volatile relationship with the lesbian community around her. She used to be part of the French rock scene, having dated and collaborated with a man named Nikki, who was a crucial figure in that milieu. But she has been out of that world for years, having switched from rock to rave culture and, concurrently, having started to date chiefly women. Her longest and most combative relationship in this scene has been with Alex, another woman who has established herself as a DJ and recently has started seeing a much younger woman named Inès. One day, Louise receives a life-changing advance from a record label to produce her own electronic music. Tension builds as she finds herself pulled toward multiple possible paths.

Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But she also is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon her arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work? As Haven searches for her father’s sunken treasure, she begins to unearth a centuries-old tale of ancient sorcery and one woman’s quest to save her lover and her village by using the legendary art of stregheria, a magical ability to harness the ocean. Could this magic be behind Positano’s latest calamities? Haven must unravel the Amalfi Curse before the region is destroyed forever.

Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In THE BOOKSHOP, we see the stakes: what has been, and what might be lost. Evan Friss’ history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many.

Thirteen-year-old Nanami loves to read and happily spends much of her free time in the library. Despite the library being as deserted as ever, one day she notices that some of her favorite books are disappearing from the shelves. Then she spots a suspicious man in a gray suit and follows him. The chase is cut short when Nanami suffers an asthma attack. By the time she catches her breath, the man has disappeared, and all that is left behind is a mysterious light filtering through the library’s familiar passageways. That’s when Tiger, the talking tabby cat who saves books, comes to the rescue. Are Nanami and Tiger prepared to face the dangerous challenges that lie ahead? Why are faceless gray soldiers burning books in a stone castle? And what happened to Rintaro, the socially withdrawn hero who helped Tiger save books in a second-hand bookshop?

Growing up in the Southeast D.C. projects with a drug dealer for a father, Curtis Wilson is a cello prodigy who rises to unimagined heights in the classical music world. But then his life suddenly disintegrates. His father, Zippy, turns state’s evidence, implicating his old bosses. Now the family must enter the witness protection program if they want to survive. This means that Curtis must give up the very thing he loves the most. When Zippy’s bosses prove too elusive for law enforcement, Curtis, Zippy, and Zippy’s girlfriend, Larissa, realize that their only chance of survival is to take on the criminals themselves. They must create new identities and draw on their unique talents, including Curtis’ musical ability, to go after the people who want them dead.

Greta Gatsby, Jay's younger sister, is finally free of her dull finishing school and looking forward to an idyllic summer at the Gatsby Mansion, the jewel of West Egg. Nothing could disrupt the blissful time she has planned…except finding out that Jay’s cadre of dubious friends --- Daisy and Tom Buchanan, along with Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker --- will be summering there, too. It's hard to be noticed when the luminous Daisy Buchanan is in the room, and Jordan keeps rather too close tabs on handsome Nick Carraway for Greta’s liking. But by far the worst is Daisy’s boorish husband, Tom, whose explosive temper seems always balanced on a knife-edge. But soon, bad blood is the least of their problems, as a shocking event sets the Gatsby household reeling. Death has come to West Egg, and with it, a web of scandal, betrayal and secrets.

There is a heatwave across Europe, and four siblings have gathered at their family’s lake house to seek answers about their father, a famous artist, who recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his long-awaited masterpiece. Now he is dead. And there is no sign of his final painting. As the siblings try to piece together what happened, they spend the summer in a state of lawlessness: living under the same roof for the first time in decades, forced to confront the buried wounds they incurred as his children, and waiting for answers. Though they have always been close, the things they learn that summer --- about themselves and their father --- will drive them apart before they can truly understand his legacy. Meanwhile, their stepmother’s enigmatic presence looms over the house.