For Grady McClarty, an ever-watchful but bewildered five-year-old boy, World War II is only a troubling, ungraspable event that occurred before he was born. But he feels its effects all around him. He and his older brother Danny are fatherless, and their mother, Bethie, is still grieving for her fighter-pilot husband. Most of all, Grady senses it in his two uncles: young combat veterans determined to step into a fatherhood role for their nephews, even as they struggle with the psychological scars they carry from the war.

In the romantic tradition of The Notebook and Nights in Rodanthe, number-one New York Times best-selling author Nicholas Sparks returns with a story about a chance encounter that becomes a touchstone for two vastly different individuals - transcending decades, continents, and the bittersweet workings of fate.

On a foggy summer night, 11 people - 10 privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter - depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: The plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are the painter Scott Burroughs and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul's family. Was it by chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something more sinister at work?

Travis Parker has everything a man could want: a good job, loyal friends, even a waterfront home in small-town North Carolina. In full pursuit of the good life, including boating, swimming, and regular barbecues with his good-natured buddies, he holds the vague conviction that a serious relationship with a woman would only cramp his style. That is, until Gabby Holland moves in next door.

A visionary work that combines speculative fiction with deep philosophical inquiry, The Sparrow tells the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who leads a scientific mission entrusted with a profound task: To make first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. The mission begins in faith, hope, and beauty, but a series of small misunderstandings brings it to a catastrophic end.

When confronted by raging fires or deadly accidents, volunteer fireman Taylor McAden feels compelled to take terrifying risks to save lives. But there is one leap of faith Taylor can't bring himself to make: He can't fall in love. For all his adult years, Taylor has sought out women who need to be rescued, women he leaves as soon as their crisis is over and the relationship starts to become truly intimate.

After years of following her navy officer husband on assignment around the world with their three children, Grace Bennett realizes that she’s left something behind - herself. Steve Bennett can’t understand the unraveling of his wife’s heart. He wants to set things right, but when a secret from his past is revealed just as he’s sent out to sea, their already-strained relationship is pushed to the edge. Now, with plenty of space to ponder the true distance between them, Grace begins to reinvent herself. Just as her new self is coming to terms with her family life, the unthinkable happens.

For a special breed of individual, the call of space is worth the risk it entails: men such as US astronauts Donald Pettit and Kenneth Bowersox, and Russian flight engineer Nikolai Budarin, who in November 2002 left on what was to be a routine 14-week mission maintaining the International Space Station. But then, on February 1, 2003, the Columbia exploded beneath them. With the launch program suspended indefinitely, these astronauts had suddenly lost their ride home.

A deeply emotional tale about Sophie Duncan, a successful columnist whose world falls apart after her daughter's unexpected illness and her husband's shocking affair. When it seems nothing else could possibly go wrong, her car skids off an icy road and plunges into a frozen lake. There, in the cold, dark depths of the water a profound and extraordinary experience unlocks the surprising secrets from Sophie's past, and teaches her what it means to truly live...and love.

Roger Torraway watched in horror as the monster lurched, toppled over and died. Project Man Plus had gone suddenly and drastically wrong. The race to colonize Mars was too important, too costly, and America was already too committed, for plans to be scrapped. They would have to make a new Martian. And Roger Torraway was it, candidate for the endless surgery, operation after painful operation, that would enable him to survive on that faraway planet.

Curtis “Launchpad” Larkin’s career as an astronaut has had its share of ups and downs. Alternately lauded as the single-handed savior of NASA and condemned as a reckless, hot-headed bully, Curt has been through the wringer of public opinion and come out on top. When he embarks on his final mission with NASA, Curt figures there’s no curveball that life has left to throw him.

Violet and Finn were “meant to be,” said everyone, always. They ended up together by the hands of fate aligning things just so. Three years into their marriage, they have a wonderful little boy, and as the three of them embark on their first vacation as a family, Violet can’t help thinking that she can’t believe her luck. Life is good. So no one is more surprised than she when Finn leaves her at the beach—just packs up the hotel room and disappears. And takes their son with him.

Katie Connelly has lived in San Francisco all her life. Her late father made his career as an ironworker on the Golden Gate Bridge, and the many stories of him trying to save jumpers still haunt her. When she's asked to write a history about the bridge, her research uncovers a secret journal hidden in her father's desk, pages of familiar advice penned by the hand of a stranger. The scribbled words tell of a promise ring and a distant love, clues that Katie hopes may answer her own unresolved sorrow.

They are just children when they first meet: Charlotte, daughter of the French ambassador, and Hiroshi, a laundress’s son. One day in the playground, Hiroshi declares that he has an idea that will change the world. An idea that will sweep away all differences between rich and poor. When Hiroshi runs into Charlotte several years later, he is trying to build a brighter future through robotics.

Newlyweds Alice and Jake are a picture-perfect couple. Alice, once a singer in a well-known rock band, is now a successful lawyer. Jake is a partner in an up-and-coming psychology practice. Their life together holds endless possibilities. After receiving an enticing wedding gift from one of Alice's prominent clients, they decide to join an exclusive and mysterious group known only as the Pact. The goal of the Pact seems simple: to keep marriages happy and intact.

Robert Charles Wilson, says The New York Times, "writes superior science fiction thrillers." His Darwinia won Canada's Aurora Award; his most recent novel, The Chronoliths, won the prestigious John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Now he tells a gripping tale of alien contact and human love in a mysterious but hopeful universe.

Roger Torraway watched in horror as the monster lurched, toppled over and died. Project Man Plus had gone suddenly and drastically wrong. The race to colonize Mars was too important, too costly, and America was already too committed, for plans to be scrapped. They would have to make a new Martian. And Roger Torraway was it, candidate for the endless surgery, operation after painful operation, that would enable him to survive on that faraway planet.

Katie Connelly has lived in San Francisco all her life. Her late father made his career as an ironworker on the Golden Gate Bridge, and the many stories of him trying to save jumpers still haunt her. When she's asked to write a history about the bridge, her research uncovers a secret journal hidden in her father's desk, pages of familiar advice penned by the hand of a stranger. The scribbled words tell of a promise ring and a distant love, clues that Katie hopes may answer her own unresolved sorrow.

It is 1994, and in the desert near Tillman, Arizona, 40 miles from Tucson, a grand experiment involving the future of humanity is underway. As climate change threatens the Earth, eight scientists, four men and four women dubbed the Terranauts, have been selected to live under glass in E2, a prototype of a possible off-Earth colony. Their sealed three-acre compound comprises five biomes - rain forest, savanna, desert, ocean, and marsh - and enough wildlife, water, and vegetation to sustain them.

Laura Brandon's promise to her dying father was simple: to visit an elderly woman she'd never heard of before. A woman who remembers nothing-except the distant past. Visiting Sarah Tolley seemed a small enough sacrifice to make. But Laura's promise results in another death: her husband's. And after their five-year-old daughter, Emma, witnesses her father's suicide, Emma refuses to talk about it - to talk at all.Frantic and guilt ridden, Laura contacts the only person who may be able to help.

In her career as a photojournalist, free-spirited Jessie Ryder has seen the world through her camera lens. But she's never traveled far enough to escape a painful moment that has haunted her for the past 16 years: the day she gave her baby daughter away. Now, facing a life-altering crisis, she's decided to fix the broken pieces of her heart and seek out Lila, even if it means she has to upset the world of Lila's adoptive mother...her very own sister, Luz.

After losing her high-octane job as an entertainment blogger, Noelle Hancock was lost. About to turn 29, she'd spent her career writing about celebrities' lives and had forgotten how to live her own. Unemployed and full of self-doubt, she had no idea what she wanted out of life. She feared change - in fact, she feared almost everything. Once confident and ambitious, she had become crippled by anxiety, lacking the courage required even to attend a dinner party - until inspiration struck one day in the form of a quote on a chalkboard in a coffee shop.

Real estate expert Olivia Bellamy reluctantly trades a trendy Manhattan summer for her family's old resort camp in the Catskills, where her primary task will be renovating the bungalow colony for her grandparents, who want one last summer together filled with fun, friends and family. A posh resort in its heyday, the camp is now in disarray and Olivia is forced to hire contractor Connor Davis - a still-smoldering flame from her own summers at camp.

Twenty years ago Emma Michaels, Mackenzie Hayes, and Serena Stockton bonded over their New York City dreams. Then, each summer, they solidified their friendship by spending one week at the lake together, solving their problems over bottles of wine and gallons of ice cream. They kept the tradition for years, until jealousy, lies, and life's disappointments made them drift apart. It's been five years since Emma has seen her friends, an absence designed to keep them from discovering a long-ago betrayal. Now she's in desperate need of their support.

It begins as a statistical oddity: a spike in children born with acute speech delays. Physically normal in every way, these children never speak and do not respond to speech; they don't learn to read, don't learn to write. As the number of cases grows to an epidemic level, theories spread. Maybe it's related to a popular antidepressant; maybe it's environmental. Or maybe these children have special skills all their own.

From behind the wheel of her car, Tess Kincaid glimpses a woman walking down a Madison, Wisconsin, street. They've never met, but Tess sees the same features every time she looks in the mirror. Tess introduces herself and discovers that she and her doppelganger, Mimi, have more than appearance in common. They even share the same birthday. Mimi - confident and outgoing where Tess is understated and shy - is convinced they're twins, separated shortly after birth. When a body is discovered in a local marsh, Tess is entangled in a search for the truth....

From award-winning New York Times bestselling author Christopher Rice comes an evocative psychological thriller about a woman who must try to save her brother’s reputation and life when he is accused of being involved in a terrorist act.

From a remote corner of the galaxy, a message is being sent. The continuous beats of a pulsar have become odd, irregular, and artificial. It can only be a code. Frantically, a research team struggles to decipher the alien communication. And what the scientists discover is destined to shake the foundations of empires around this world - from Wall Street to the Vatican.

From the moment Martha and her husband, John, conceived their second child, all hell broke loose. They were a couple obsessed with success. After years of matching IQs and test scores with less driven peers, they had two Harvard degrees apiece and were gunning for more. But the dream had begun to disintegrate. Then, when their unborn son, Adam, was diagnosed with Down syndrome, doctors, advisers, and friends in the Harvard community warned them not to keep the baby.

Dr. Olivia Simon is on duty in the emergency room of North Carolina's Outer Banks Hospital when a gunshot victim is brought in. Midway through the desperate effort to save the young woman's life, Olivia realizes who she is - Annie O'Neill, the woman Olivia's husband, Paul, is in love with.