fiction

A spark ignites inside fourteen-year-old Iz Beaufort when she hears school music group Manifesto perform. Even though she hasn't written a song since That Place, she recognizes herself in the moving performance and longs to be part of the group, certain that they might actually understand her. But Manifesto is based at the prestigious Metier School, and Iz has bounced through twenty-six foster homes. Plus, there's no way Dominion Children's Care would ever send a foster kid to a private school when a public option is available. So Iz does what any passionate, broken, off-the-chart wunderkind might and takes matters into her own hands. Iz fakes her way in only to face a new set of challenges: tuition fees, tough classwork, and new classmates she can't immediately identify as friends or foes.

It's 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blackburn Gant, his life irrevocably altered by a childhood case of polio, seems condemned to spend his life among the dead as the sole caretaker of a hilltop cemetery. It suits his withdrawn personality, and the inexplicable occurrences that happen from time to time rattle him less than interaction with the living. But when his best and only friend, the kind but impulsive Jacob Hampton, is conscripted to serve overseas, Blackburn is charged with caring for Jacob's wife, Naomi, as well. Sixteen-year-old Naomi Clarke is an outcast in Blowing Rock, an outsider, poor and uneducated, who works as a seasonal maid in the town's most elegant hotel. When Naomi eloped with Jacob a few months after her arrival, the marriage scandalized the community, most of all his wealthy parents, who disinherited him. Shunned by the townsfolk for their differences and equally fearful that Jacob may never come home, Blackburn and Naomi grow closer and closer until a shattering development derails numerous lives.

Last fall, Cynthia Rothschild saved her best friend, Annie, (and everyone else in her high school) from the demon librarian, Mr. Gabriel. But now all that demon stuff is over, and Cyn is ready to have the best summer ever.

A noted (but not universally liked) photographer is murdered. Did someone connected with his recent project bear him a grudge? Or is there a secret buried deep in the history of the victim?s rather eccentric family? Forensic psychologist Alex Delaware and LAPD detective Milo Sturgis soon learn that there won?t be any easy answers, as the mystery only deepens the more they dig into the victim?s life.

After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus Crown returns home to Charon County, land of moonshine and cornbread, fist fights and honeysuckle. Seeing his hometown struggling with a bigoted police force inspires him to run for sheriff. He wins, and becomes the first Black sheriff in the history of the county. Then a year to the day after his election, a young Black man is fatally shot by Titus's deputies. Titus pledges to follow the truth wherever it leads. But no one expected he would unearth a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. Now, Titus must pull off the impossible: stay true to his instincts, prevent outright panic, and investigate a shocking crime in a small town where everyone knows everyone yet secrets flourish. All while also breaking up backroads bar fights and being forced to protect racist Confederate pride marchers. For a Black man wearing a police uniform in the American South, that's no easy feat. But Charon is Titus's home and his heart, and he won't let the darkness overtake it. Even as it threatens to consume him.

An eco-wellness retreat has opened on an island off the English coast, promising rest and relaxation; but the island itself, once the playground of a serial killer, is rumored to be cursed. Detective Elin Warner is called to the retreat when a young woman's body is found on the rocks below the yoga pavilion in what seems to be a tragic fall. When a guest drowns in a diving incident the following day, Elin starts to suspect that there's nothing accidental about these deaths. Elin must find the killer, before the island's history starts to repeat itself.

All across the United States respectable, upstanding citizens are showing up dead. These deaths could be accidents, and they don't appear to be connected; until a fatal fall from a high-floor window attracts some unexpected attention. That attention comes from the secretary of defense. All of a sudden he wants an interagency task force to investigate. And he wants Jack Reacher as the army's representative. If Reacher gets a result, great. If not, he's a convenient fall guy. But office politics isn't Reacher's thing. Three questions quickly emerge: Who's with him, who's against him, and will the justice he dispenses be the official kind or his own kind?.

In Gerrardsville, Colorado, two witnesses to the same tragedy give two different accounts. One guy sees a woman throw herself in front of a bus in what authorities will call a suicide. The other witness is Jack Reacher. And he sees what actually happened: A man in a gray hoodie and jeans, moving like a shadow, pushed the victim to her death; before swiftly grabbing the dead woman's purse and strolling away. Reacher follows the killer on foot, not knowing that he is part of something much bigger and far-reaching, a secret conspiracy with many moving parts, with powerful people on the take, all involved in an undertaking that leaves no room for error. If any step is compromised, the threat will have to be quickly and quietly and permanently removed. Because when the threat is Reacher, there is No Plan B.

Sloan will go through hell and back for those she loves. And she does so, every single day. Caught up with the alluring Asa Jackson, a notorious drug trafficker, Sloan has finally found a lifeline to cling to, even if it's meant compromising her morals. She was in dire straits trying to pay for her brother's care until she met Asa. But as Sloan became emotionally and economically reliant on him, he in turn developed a disturbing obsession with her--one that becomes increasingly dangerous every day. When undercover DEA agent Carter enters the picture, Sloan's surprised to feel an immediate attraction between them, despite knowing that if Asa finds out, he will kill him. And Asa has always been a step ahead of everyone in his life, including Sloan. No one has ever gotten in his way. No one except Carter. Together, Sloan and Carter must find a way out before it's too late.

Strangers in Paradise is the compelling love story of three unlikely friends who find themselves bound together by their pasts.