On a hot July afternoon, a worker at an Antietam Creek construction site drives the blade of his backhoe into a layer of soil - and strikes a 5,000-year-old human skull. The discovery draws plenty of attention and a lot of controversy. It also changes the life of one woman in ways she never expected.

Dora Conroy has a passion for antiques - and any other rarities she can acquire for her quaint Philadelphia shop. A seasoned dealer, she knows all the tricks of the trade. But she is unprepared for the deadly consequences when she purchases a few curiosities at an auction - and unknowingly brings home a priceless cache that makes her the target of an international criminal.

Kelsey Byden always believed that her mother was dead. But now, after all this time, she has discovered the truth: Naomi Chadwick is still alive - after spending years in prison for the murder of her lover. Now, at Naomi’s Virginia horse farm, Kelsey is trying to sort out a lifetime of deception - and her feelings about her mother. The bonds of love can be fragile...as Kelsey learned from her recently ended marriage.

Eve Benedict is the kind of subject who could make any biographer’s career. Last of the movie goddesses, she has two Oscars, four ex-husbands, and a legion of lovers, both famous and infamous. Now she is ready to write a tell-all memoir that has even Hollywood’s richest and most powerful worried. Julia Summers never dreamed of being chosen to tell Eve’s story.

Sophia Giambelli has never worried about competition. As a savvy businesswoman, she knows she must be prepared for anything...but she isn't prepared for Tyler MacMillan.

A summer at his grandparents' South Dakota ranch is not 11-year-old Cooper Sullivan's idea of a good time. But things are a bit more bearable now that he's discovered the neighbor girl, Lil Chance, and her homemade batting cage. Even horseback riding isn't as awful as Coop thought it would be. Each year, with Coop's annual summer visit, their friendship deepens from innocent games to stolen kisses, but there is one shared experience that will forever haunt them: the terrifying discovery of a hiker's body.

Emma McAvoy may have grown up in the limelight, but some secrets are hidden in a darkness no light can reach. Now on the verge of a successful career, and having fallen in love with the man of her dreams, Emma is looking to the future. Yet it’s the past that is about to catch up with her. For Emma, her childhood had been almost like a rags-to-riches fairy tale - until the tragic night that changed her family forever. But what Emma thinks she knows about that terrible night and the man she’s about to marry is only half the truth.

Photographer Jo Ellen Hathaway thought she'd escaped the house called Sanctuary long ago. She'd spent her loneliest years there, after the sudden, unexplained disappearance of her mother. Yet the sprawling inn on an island off the Georgia coast continues to haunt her dreams. And now, even more haunting are the pictures someone is sending her: strange close-ups and candids, culminating in the most shocking portrait of all - a photo of her mother - naked, beautiful, and dead.

Tory Bodeen grew up in a run-down house where her father ruled with an iron fist and a leather belt - and where her dreams and talents had no room to flourish. Her one escape was her neighbor Hope, who lived in the big house just a short skip away, and whose friendship allowed Tory to be something she wasn’t allowed to be at home: a child. Then Hope was brutally murdered, and everything fell apart.

New York Times best-selling novelist Nora Roberts captivates millions of fans with her provocative blend of scorching passion and chilling suspense. With Carnal Innocence, she creates a gripping tale of murder, infatuation, and true love in a small southern town. After beautiful concert violinist Caroline Waverly breaks up with her conductor and lover Luis, she escapes to her late grandmother’s home in Innocence, Mississippi.

Enjoying the view from the mountain she has just climbed, Reece Gilmore sees a woman being attacked. But when authorities comb the area, they find nothing - no signs of struggle. No freshly turned earth. Not even a tire track. No one in town seems to believe Reece, except Brody, a gruff loner.

Daughter of a cold, controlling mother and an anonymous donor, studious, obedient Elizabeth Fitch finally let loose one night, drinking too much at a nightclub and allowing a strange man’s seductive Russian accent to lure her to a house on Lake Shore Drive. Twelve years later, the woman now known as Abigail Lowery lives alone on the outskirts of a small town in the Ozarks.

The daughter of a world-renowned magician, Roxy Nouvelle has inherited her father’s talents - and his penchant for jewel thievery. Into this colorful world comes Luke Callahan, an escape artist who captures her heart - and keeps secrets that could shatter all her illusions...

In the unbearable heat of another sultry Washington, D.C., summer, a serial killer is on the loose. Dr. Tess Court, one of the capital’s most successful psychiatrists, wants nothing to do with the case—until the police convince her to lend a hand to the lead investigator, legendary ladies’ man Detective Ben Paris. Scarred by his family’s history, Ben has even less use for shrinks than Tess has for him—but the forces of animal magnetism and a shared desire to catch the demented criminal known as “The Priest” inexorably erode the walls they’ve built.

As a Baltimore cop, Nate Burke watched his partner die on the street - and the guilt still haunts him. With nowhere else to go, he accepted the job as Chief of Police in a tiny, remote Alaskan town with the hopes of starting over.

Tory Bodeen grew up in a run-down house where her father ruled with an iron fist and a leather belt - and where her dreams and talents had no room to flourish. Her one escape was her neighbor Hope, who lived in the big house just a short skip away, and whose friendship allowed Tory to be something she wasn’t allowed to be at home: a child. Then Hope was brutally murdered, and everything fell apart.

Young love — that was what Nadine and Hayden had. The kind of love that captures the soul and never dies. That is, until Hayden’s father swindled Nadine’s family, and they didn’t see each other for thirteen years. When his father suddenly dies, Hayden returns home to the family’s lakeside mansion — and to his first love. But Nadine and her two young sons aren’t quite ready to trust again. Soon Hayden is left trying to work through mistrust and misinformation to gain the love of the girl no amount of money could make him forget….

Famous criminal defense attorney Jackson Moore thought he had left his bad-boy past behind him — but his childhood sweetheart had different plans for him. Rachelle Tremont thought she could forget her tragic small-town history by writing about it in her nationally syndicated column. She hadn't counted on Jackson Moore's return, or on the way her blood ran hot at the sight of him. He was determined to discover the town's secrets with Rachelle — and in doing so, uncover some secrets of their own.

hnny Harris is home again, his too-tight jeans and damn-your-eyes belligerence honed to perfection by a ten-year stretch in federal prison for murder. Now he’s out on parole and ready for the job Rachel Grant has promised him to help him begin a new life. Unlike the rest of the town, Rachel has always believed in her former student’s innocence. But one thing has changed. The sullenly handsome boy she remembers is still sullen, still handsome - but no longer a boy.

The Malory Price Life Plan does not include a quixotic quest - but the strangers on Warrior's Peak claim that she must find a key that will release three souls held captive by an evil god.

In number-one New York Times best-selling author Charlaine Harris’s "Dahlia Underground,” venerable vampire Dahlia Lynley-Chivers survives an attack by an anti-vampire terrorist group, only to show them they tried to blow up the wrong bloodsucker. Bailey Ruth Raeburn, a ghost assigned to assist humans in trouble, steps into the middle of a marital dispute with surprising twists in Carolyn Hart’s “Riding High”....

Once there was a girl who ran away and joined a traveling carnival. She married a man she grew to hate - and gave birth to a child she could never love. A child so monstrous that she killed it with her own hands.… Twenty-five years later, Ellen Harper has a new life, a new husband, and two normal children - Joey loves monster movies, and Amy is about to graduate from high school. But their mother drowns her secret guilt in alcohol and prayer.

A woman's desperate search to find out what happened to the daughter who disappeared seven years ago leads her from a quaint collectibles shop in New Orleans into a murky Louisiana bayou and the shadowy ancestral home of an eccentric dollmaker whose "portrait" dolls resemble missing children. Set in the steamy, violent world of the Louisiana Gulf Coast, The Dollmaker is the story of obsession, redemption, and a love reborn from the ashes of despair.

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen.

With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.

Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.

In the air, there's a feeling of Christmas...so settle into your coziest armchair and enjoy four captivating tales that will make your holidays merry and bright....

What’s happening in Acker’s Gap, West Virginia? Three elderly men are gunned down over their coffee at a local diner, and seemingly half the town is there to witness the act. Still, it happened so fast, and no one seems to have gotten a good look at the shooter. Was it random? Was it connected to the spate of drug violence plaguing poor areas of the country just like Acker’s Gap? Or were Dean Streeter, Shorty McClurg, and Lee Rader targeted somehow?

Something dark and dangerous had long shadowed Skye Dearborn’s life. She had seen the fear of it in her mother’s eyes. It was there, locked in her memories of blood spilling across a gleaming floor. In the sound of her own screams. And in the terror she’d felt the night her mother disappeared. Then fortune smiled on Skye. With help she was able to put the horror behind her and look to the future. But now that same fortune is leading her into the arms of danger - and back into the nightmare of her past. For the evil that has haunted her dreams has a human form....

Sometimes in life you need a little breathing room, especially when your life has just fallen apart. Dr. Isabel Favor, America's diva of self help, knows this all too well. She's lost her fiancé to an earth mother, her accountant has absconded with her money, and her self-help empire is in shambles. She flees the country to Tuscany, waiting for life to settle down, but the biggest disaster lies just ahead. On one unforgettable night, she's about to meet Lorenzo Gage, Hollywood's favorite villain.

Eve Benedict is the kind of subject who could make any biographer’s career. Last of the movie goddesses, she has two Oscars, four ex-husbands, and a legion of lovers, both famous and infamous. Now she is ready to write a tell-all memoir that has even Hollywood’s richest and most powerful worried. Julia Summers never dreamed of being chosen to tell Eve’s story.

The daughter of a world-renowned magician, Roxy Nouvelle has inherited her father’s talents - and his penchant for jewel thievery. Into this colorful world comes Luke Callahan, an escape artist who captures her heart - and keeps secrets that could shatter all her illusions...

After an assault at her family home in Maine, Dr. Miranda Jones is determined to put the experience behind her. Distraction comes when she is summoned to Italy - to verify the authenticity of a Renaissance bronze of a Medici courtesan known as The Dark Lady. But instead of cementing Miranda’s reputation as the leading expert in the field, the job nearly destroys it when her professional judgment is called into question.

Kelsey Byden always believed that her mother was dead. But now, after all this time, she has discovered the truth: Naomi Chadwick is still alive - after spending years in prison for the murder of her lover. Now, at Naomi’s Virginia horse farm, Kelsey is trying to sort out a lifetime of deception - and her feelings about her mother. The bonds of love can be fragile...as Kelsey learned from her recently ended marriage.

Finally out of the celebrity spotlight and away from her mother's demands, Cilla is free to do what she loves: fixing up houses for profit. Her current project is personal. The Shenandoah Valley farm house was once the vacation home of Hollywood luminary Janet Hardy, Cilla's grandmother. When Cilla uncovers a stash of her grandmother's private letters, and begins asking questions about the past, she becomes the target of a crazed killer.

Photographer Jo Ellen Hathaway thought she'd escaped the house called Sanctuary long ago. She'd spent her loneliest years there, after the sudden, unexplained disappearance of her mother. Yet the sprawling inn on an island off the Georgia coast continues to haunt her dreams. And now, even more haunting are the pictures someone is sending her: strange close-ups and candids, culminating in the most shocking portrait of all - a photo of her mother - naked, beautiful, and dead.

Little else in life is as dangerous as fire jumping. Flying past towering pillars of smoke, parachuting down to the edge of an all-consuming blaze, shoveling and sawing for hours upon hours, days at a time, all to hold the line and push back against the raw power of Mother Nature. But there’s also little else as thrilling - at least to Rowan Tripp. The Missoula smoke jumpers are one of the most exclusive firefighting squads in the nation, and the job is in Rowan’s blood: her father is a legend in the field. She’s been fighting fires since her eighteenth birthday.

Whitney MacAllister has all the wealth, power, and beauty anyone could ever wish for, and is therefore profoundly bored. Enter Douglas Lord, a good-looking, street-smart thief, who brings Whitney into his world of high adventure and murderous rivals. They come to a business agreement: Whitney will bankroll Douglas on an expedition to retrieve the legendary lost treasure of a long-dead Madagascar queen; in exchange, Whitney will get to come along and keep half the money once they have gained their prize.

This deliciously scandalous novel tells us the secrets of the reigning queens of television talk shows, Deanna Reynolds and Angela Perkins. Their high-staked rivalry, fought with public smiles and private betrayals, is more than a ratings competition. It becomes an off-screen war when Deanna replaces Angela both on the air and behind the scenes with Angela's former lover after Angela moves to the big time in New York.

Olivia’s parents were among Hollywood’s golden couples - until the night a monster came and took her mother away forever. A monster with the face of her father... Sheltered from the truth, an older Olivia only dimly recalls her night of terror - but her recurring nightmares make her realize she must piece together the real story. Now, assisted by Noah Brady, the son of the police detective who found her cowering in her closet so many years before, she may have her chance.