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As a new resident of Golden Grove, an independent living community for active seniors, Sally wants to do everything in her power to start off on the right foot. But between navigating unspoken social rules of the community and leaving two struggling adult children back at home, fitting in becomes harder than she expected. So when she sees flyers advertising the Scrabble Club, she thinks she might as well give it a try. She quickly realizes her faux pas when she walks into the library to find just one man, Walter Kretzer. Walter has taken his Scrabble club a pinch too seriously in the past, but when he meets Sally and discovers she is something of a prodigy at the game, he can't help but feel that his fate is about to change. As he draws Sally into the world of high-stakes Scrabble tournaments, his feelings for her grow and inspire him to take a hard look at his life.
Criminal defense lawyer Björn Diemel has been given an ultimatum: repair his work-life balance, or his wife will leave him --- and take their daughter. He reluctantly starts a mindfulness course, and to his surprise, it’s a revelation. He becomes calmer, happier and more focused as he starts to understand what’s really important in life. When his worst client, brutal crime boss Dragan Sergowicz, tries to interfere with his precious family time, Björn discovers that even murder can be a mindfulness exercise to protect his peace.
At 66 years old, Winston Kemper has always been a nonentity. No one notices him. His simple existence barely registers for those who come into contact with him. Winston is a collector of voices, and his magnum opus --- The Butterfly Girls --- is a sprawling epic of untapped imagination. It has no single canvas, no particular frame. It is everywhere: scribbled on the walls, the floor and countless notebooks. Winston is creating a fantasia that exists in words, images and blood. As part of his “art,” he has been murdering forgotten women. Poor souls who slip through the cracks of society, who no one is looking for. Winston takes their lives, their voices. But now he can hear them. They whisper to him. They talk of revenge. Winston might not believe in ghosts, but he is about to learn they are very real. And they are very, very angry.
After the tragic death of their parents, the seven Ward sisters are sent to live with their grandmother on the remote forest island of Beltane, a place suspended between time and shadow. What begins as an attempt to mend their fractured lives soon twists into a waking nightmare, where grief bleeds into childhood fantasy and ancient rites awaken a dark and eerie devotion to Daudir, the Forgotten God of the Wood. When another cruel tragedy strikes, the sisters are left to fend for themselves. The fragile world they’ve carved splinters beneath the weight of isolation, and the forest around them grows restless. Years later, a cryptic letter summons the surviving sisters home. Drawn back into the wild embrace of their dangerous faith, they confront a truth more terrible than memory, and the dreadful secret that waits in the depths of the all-seeing trees.
A former high-ranking Russian intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. after providing critical information about Russian spies in U.S. government service, Leonard Summers and his wife and son have spent the past year holed up in a CIA facility near Washington. After the CIA makes a deal with the U.S. Marshal Service’s Witness Protection Program (WPP), Leonard’s family is transported to Minneapolis. The plan is to hide them in a wooded Minneapolis suburb that resembles their former home and dacha near Moscow. The Summers are received at their destination by Lucas Davenport and fellow marshal Shelly White. Unbeknownst to them, the WPP group has been tracked by a Russian hit team. As shots are fired and enemies dodged, Lucas must move quickly to uncover where the leak is coming from before the hit team can strike again.
Rory McIlroy contains multitudes. He can overwhelm a golf course with his transcendent talent and then, at the next tournament, look utterly lost. McIlroy is golf’s most eloquent ambassador and a trash-talking troll, sometimes in the same press conference. The child of a working-class family from a small town in a war-torn homeland now commutes to work in his own private jet and counts billionaires as confidants. A dozen years ago, McIlroy asked Alan Shipnuck a question about the player he had modeled himself after, Tiger Woods: “What’s he really like?” As McIlroy enters the last act of his highly eventful career, this book is a chance to redirect that old question and try to understand a man of deep complexity and contradictions.
When Sydney and Mae meet on the playground as toddlers, it seems like kismet. Even their very different mothers --- the Type-A Beth Ann and the free-spirited Joni --- agree the girls are made for each other. Then a falling-out draws them apart, and decades later, the loneliness still lingers for the newly pregnant Sydney. Adrift in the absence of her closest friend, Sydney has been drawn into a Multi-Level Marketing scheme. Across the city, Mae is stunned to find herself single, pregnant, and still haunted by the loss of her mercurial late mother, Joni. When Sydney and Mae find themselves back in one another’s lives, each with a baby girl on the horizon, it once again seems like destiny. But soon they will discover a devastating secret at the center of their orbits --- a truth that finally will bind them or shatter them for good.
Homicide Detective Godai of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is assigned to investigate the death of a lawyer, Kensuke Shiraishi, whose body was found on a Central Tokyo riverbank. His investigations lead him to one Tatsuro Kuraki, who claims to have had limited contact with Shiraishi. But, surprising the investigators, Kuraki confesses not only to the lawyer's murder, but to another one from 30 years ago --- for which another man was arrested and died in custody before trial. This brings unexpected resolution to two cases, but there is one problem: to Detective Godai, the confession rings false. As Godai investigates further, he discovers that the relation between the murder of 30 years ago and the recent one is complex, raising multifaceted questions of guilt and innocence.
Harold may be an aging mutt --- but Amelia May, the romance novelist who adopted him, taught him a thing or two about the human heart before she died. And she left Harold with a final task: to help her partner, Miguel, find love again. Unfortunately, the grief-ridden recluse rarely goes out, not even to the bookstore he and Amelia owned together. Now it’s in danger of going under, and to make matters even worse, a renowned author doesn’t show up for his event. Miguel and Harold set out to find the no-show and insist he fulfill his obligation. Instead they’re greeted by his sister, Fiona, who is intent on protecting her brother’s privacy. But her precocious 11-year-old daughter, who’s also named Amelia, immediately befriends Harold…and he can’t help but wonder if his Amelia was right when she said there are no coincidences in life.
Sunset Hall is abuzz with anticipation of Bernadette’s upcoming wedding. But her best friend, Agnes Sharp, isn’t a fan of her plan to leave the house share and its residents behind. Nevertheless, Agnes and the not-so-sprightly gang of pensioners launch into wedding-planning mode after a spot opens at the high-class Foxglove Manor --- in just two weeks. Just when they think they have the guest list squared away, a threatening note appears at the house. Agnes and the others decide to handle it themselves, not wanting to cause the betrothed stress. With some assistance from a private investigator, Agnes digs into the case of the poison-pen letter, determined to ensure the wedding goes off without a hitch…aside from the bodies they’ve already had to hide from the bride.
