Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong?

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis' parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents - telekinesis and telepathy - who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and 10-year-old Avery Dixon.

Clare and Henry have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was 36. They were married when Clare was 23 and Henry was 31. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.

Kristen Petersen doesn't do drama, will fight to the death for her friends, and has no room in her life for guys who just don't get her. She's also keeping a big secret: facing a medically necessary procedure that will make it impossible for her to have children. Planning her best friend's wedding is bittersweet for Kristen - especially when she meets the best man, Josh Copeland. He's funny, sexy, never offended by her mile-wide streak of sarcasm, and always one chicken enchilada ahead of her hangry. Even her dog, Stuntman Mike, adores him. The only catch: Josh wants a big family.

Eleven-year-old Maybelle Lane collects sounds. She records the Louisiana crickets chirping, Momma strumming her guitar, their broken trailer door squeaking. But the crown jewel of her collection is a sound she didn't collect herself: an old recording of her daddy's warm-sunshine laugh, saved on an old phone's voicemail. It's the only thing she has of his, and the only thing she knows about him. Until the day she hears that laugh - his laugh - pouring out of the car radio. Going against Momma's wishes, Maybelle starts listening to her radio DJ daddy's new show....

To the Green-Eyed Lovebird: We met 15 years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House. You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more. We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other. Yet, somehow, it all fell apart.

Teancum Leon, who goes by Tean, is a wildlife veterinarian. His life has settled into a holding pattern: He loves his job, he hates first dates, and he only occasionally has to deal with his neighbor Mrs. Wish’s cat-related disasters. All of that changes, though, when a man appears in his office, asking for help to find his brother. Jem is convinced that something bad has happened to Benny, and he thinks Tean might be able to help. Tean isn’t sure, but he’s willing to try. After all, Jem is charming and sweet and surprisingly vulnerable. Oh. And hot.

Meet a big-city cop trying to run her twin’s small-town lingerie shop and milk her goats, an Australian actor/professional werewolf who’s getting pretty bloody tired of hearing his tagline quoted back to him, an American businessman terrified of water who’s forced to wade into the Australian surf in his shirt and tie, and much more.

After being duped out of her life savings in Germany, Val Fremden retreats home to Florida with more than just her pride in tatters. Broke, jobless, divorced, and 45, she knows starting over won’t be easy. But when her only friend suddenly turns up dead, Val begins to wonder if the world is out to get her.

On the eve of her wedding, Emily, a top Hollywood agent, is devastated to learn that her CEO fiancé is a serial cheater. Refusing to follow her instincts, she goes ahead with the marriage in order to preserve her hard-earned membership in the one percent. A master maneuverer, Emily is confident that she can outsmart her husband, clean up his messes, while enjoying the fabulous fruits of high-powered coupledom. When her husband embarks on an audacious affair with his volatile young receptionist, Emily’s savvy is put to the test.

Cutting all ties, Kayla Montgomery drives cross-country to Los Angeles. New start. New life. And an unexpected new job: assistant to Justin Beckett. The Justin Beckett. The boy band rebel with the cocky attitude and dreamy bed head who casts a spell over his fans and tests the patience of his handlers. Now at the peak of Mount Adulthood, he has to build a clean-cut, movie star image. It’s in his contract. No partying. No attitude. No groupies. To tie it together, he needs a normal girl. Suddenly, Kayla’s swept up in Justin’s glamorous world, and his arms.

When Lillian Summer Fairview's husband up and dies on her, it leaves the last living member of the most prestigious family in Summer Shoals, Georgia, in a hot mess. While Lil was busy being a proper Southern lady, Harlan squandered dang near the whole family fortune on lottery tickets. To keep her financial skeletons in the closet and give him a decent burial, Lil made a deal that has now landed her in prison.

Irene, a lonely 19-year-old in rural North Carolina, works long nights at the local pool hall, serving pitchers and dodging drunks. One evening, her hilarious, magnetic coworker Luce invites her on a joyride through the mountains to take revenge on a particularly creepy customer. Their adventure not only spells the beginning of a dazzling friendship, it seduces both girls into the mysterious world of pills and the endless hustles needed to fund the next high.

When Jace Montgomery comes home late from entertaining clients, he discovers that his wife, Tessa, is missing. There’s broken glass at the back door. Clumps of her hair. Blood. The cops in their small New Jersey town have him pegged as a suspect, especially after he explodes at a reporter during a press conference. Jace maintains his innocence despite the mounting evidence against him, but when a coworker he’s accused of having an affair with also disappears and a search warrant turns up an illegal gun in Jace’s home, all signs point to him as the culprit.

By day, Holly Hudson’s a story editor for Wifetime Network. By night, she’s the writer for the network’s very cheesy, very straight holiday romance series -Christmas in Evermore. Holly took the job to accomplish exactly one thing: A gay Christmas movie. She’s been shot down before, but things start to look up when Meredith Drake unexpectedly moves into the network’s holiday division. In this contemporary romance, Holly and Meredith work to make the Yuletide gayer while discovering that happy endings aren’t only for the movies.

In college, Elizabeth Smile shared a magical tryst with her roommate, Michelle Harlow. She had no idea the night would leave Elizabeth pining after her for the next ten years. Now Michelle is back with a strange offer: Will she pretend to be Michelle's lesbian lover to beat Michelle's cheating husband?

Mystery-book aficionado Birdie Lindberg has an overactive imagination. Raised in isolation and homeschooled by strict grandparents, she's cultivated a whimsical fantasy life in which she plays the heroic detective and every stranger is a suspect. But her solitary world expands when she takes a job the summer before college, working the graveyard shift at a historic Seattle hotel. In her new job, Birdie hopes to blossom from introverted dreamer to brave pioneer, and gregarious Daniel Aoki volunteers to be her guide.

I can't say they didn't warn me. Right now, I realize: I probably should have listened. Because if there's anyone who has no business playing a sport that requires a helmet, pads, and a liability waiver, it's this girl. The same girl who once knocked herself out during a game of backyard baseball. I stepped up to the plate, pulled the bat back a little too far to swing, and clocked myself in the back of the skull. Boom. Lights Out Lucy. That's how I got my roller derby name. So yeah. Maybe I should have known better.

Everything Hope knows about the Orchard House is from the stories of her late mother. So when she arrives at the northern Michigan family estate late one night with a terrible secret and her 10-year-old daughter in tow, she’s not sure if she’ll be welcomed or turned away with a shotgun by the aunt she has never met.

Bopped on the head from a falling plastic Santa, local undertaker Emma Lee Raines is told she's suffering from "funeral trauma." It's trauma all right, because the not-so-dearly departed keep talking to her. Take Ruthie Sue Payne - innkeeper, gossip queen, and arch-nemesis of Emma Lee's granny - she's adamant that she didn't just fall down those stairs. She was pushed. Ruthie has no idea who wanted her pushing up daisies, but she can't cross over until the matter is laid to eternal rest. Emma Lee's high-school crush, Sheriff Jack Henry Ross, isn't ready to rule out foul play.

Clare and Henry have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was 36. They were married when Clare was 23 and Henry was 31. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.

Charlotte has spent her 20s adrift, searching for a spark to jump-start her life and give her a sense of purpose. She’s had as many jobs as she’s had bad relationships, and now she’s feeling especially lost in her less-than-glamorous gig at a pie-and-fry joint in Los Angeles, where the uniforms are bad and the tips are even worse. Then she collides - literally - with Adam, an intriguing, handsome, and mysterious painter.

Escape with three warm-hearted romantic comedy novellas about women’s second chances at first love from beloved romance authors Suzanne Enoch, Molly Harper, and Karen Hawkins.

In Autobiography of a Fat Bride, Laurie Notaro tries painfully to make the transition from all-night partyer and bar-stool regular to mortgagee with plumbing problems and no air conditioning. Laurie finds grown-up life just as harrowing as her reckless youth, as she meets Mr. Right, moves in, settles down, and crosses the toe-stubbing threshold of matrimony.

Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub “Catch a Rising Star” as a 21-year-old college student in fall of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything. “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from 45 years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.”

Danielle Clark's life is going according to plan. She's in the middle of her surgical residency and she and her fiance, Will, are the perfect match. At least that's what everyone tells them. When Will brings home a rescue dog, it's hard to tell who's less enthused, Dani or her cat, Jinx. The dog wreaks havoc on the household and needs training, but who has time for that? Certainly not Dani.

Macy Tucker was five years old when her beloved grandfather dropped dead in his spaghetti. At 12, her father left his family in the dust. At 25, her husband gave his secretary a pre-Christmas bonus in bed, and Macy gave him the boot. To put things lightly, men have been undependable. That's why dating's off the menu. Macy is focused on putting herself through law school - which means being the delivery girl for Papa's Pizza.

Emergency-call operator Hollie Porter is saddled with a job she hates and a boyfriend who’s all wrong for her. Reaching a breaking point, she cashes in a gift certificate and heads to Revelation Cove in British Columbia. Flying solo and newly single, Hollie hopes to reflect and discover her purpose among the beautiful surroundings but instead ends up unintentionally providing comic relief for the staff and guests alike. Even concierge Ryan, a former hockey star with bad knees and broken dreams, can’t stop her from stumbling from one (mis)adventure to another.

It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers.

When the corporate monolith PortSys brought porting to the masses, CEO Emilia Kirsch and her son, Jason, accomplished what every other start-up company had failed to deliver. They really did change the world. They reversed climate change. They created a multitrillion-dollar industry out of thin air, curing economic woes across the globe. They made it so that anyone could be anywhere simply by touching a screen...including the man who murdered Sarah Huff. Now, Sarah’s 17-year-old sister, Anna, is determined to hunt the bastard down. But there are a few problems.