For fans of The Rose Code and The Paris Library, The Librarian of Burned Books is a captivating WWII-era novel about the intertwined fates of three women who believe in the power of books to triumph over the very darkest moments of war.

In this daring debut, Susan Elia MacNeal blends meticulous research on the era, psychological insight into Winston Churchill, and the creation of a riveting main character, Maggie Hope, into a spectacularly crafted novel.

Londoner Madeleine Grant is studying at the Sorbonne in Paris when she marries charismatic French journalist Giles Martin. As they raise their son, Olivier, they hold on to a tenuous promise for the future. Until the thunder of war sets off alarms in France. Staying behind to join the resistance, Giles sends Madeleine and Olivier to the relative safety of England, where Madeleine secures a job teaching French at a secondary school. Yet nowhere is safe. After a devastating twist of fate resulting in the loss of her son, Madeleine accepts a request from the ministry to aid in the war effort.

At the end of her first unsuccessful season out in society, Lady Georgiana has all but given up on attracting a suitable man - until she receives an invitation to a masked Halloween ball at Broxley Manor. Georgie is uncertain why she was invited, until she learns that the royal family intends to marry her off to a foreign prince, one reputed to be mad.

Rome, 1943. With the fall of Italy's Fascist government and the Nazi regime occupying the streets of Rome, British ballerina Julia Bradbury is stranded and forced to take refuge at a hospital on Tiber Island. But when she learns of a deadly sickness sweeping through the quarantine wards--a fake disease known only as Syndrome K--she is drawn into one of the greatest cons in history. Alongside hospital staff, friars of the adjoining church, and two Allied medics, Julia risks everything to rescue Jewish Italians from the deadly clutches of the Holocaust.

New York, 1937: When estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers learn their grandmother is dying, they agree to fulfill her last wish: to travel across Europe - together. They are to deliver three letters, in which Violet will say good-bye to those she hasn’t seen since traveling to Europe 40 years earlier. Clara, ever-dutiful, sees the trip as an inconvenient detour before her wedding to millionaire Charles Hancock, but it’s also a chance to embrace her love of art. Budding journalist Madeleine relishes the opportunity to develop her ambitions....

June 1933. Independent, young Kitty Underhay has been left in charge of her family’s hotel, The Dolphin, on the tranquil English coast. But when several rooms are broken into and searched, including Kitty’s own, she quickly realizes that something out of the ordinary is afoot at the hotel. Soon, rumors are flying in the cozy town that someone is on the hunt for a stolen ruby. A ruby that Kitty’s mother may well have possessed when she herself went missing during the Great War.

London, 1940. Bombs fall and Josie Banks’ world crumbles around her. Her overbearing husband, Stan, is unreachable, called to service. Her home, a ruin of rubble and ash. Josie’s beloved tearoom boss has been killed, and Josie herself is injured, with nothing left and nowhere to go. Evacuated to the English countryside, Josie ends up at the estate of the aristocratic Miss Harcourt, a reluctant host to the survivors of the Blitz. Now a threat looms larger than anyone imagined. And a dangerous secret is about to upend Josie’s life again.

Ava thought her job as a librarian at the Library of Congress would mean a quiet, routine existence. But an unexpected offer from the US military has brought her to Lisbon with a new mission: posing as a librarian while working undercover as a spy gathering intelligence. Meanwhile, in occupied France, Elaine has begun an apprenticeship at a printing press run by members of the Resistance. It’s a job usually reserved for men, but in the war, those rules have been forgotten. Yet she knows that the Nazis are searching for the press and its printer in order to silence them.

1938: She was one of the six sparkling Mitford sisters, known for her stinging quips, stylish dress, and bright green eyes. But Nancy Mitford’s seemingly dazzling life was really one of turmoil: with a perpetually unfaithful and broke husband, two Nazi sympathizer sisters, and her hopes of motherhood dashed forever. With war imminent, Nancy finds respite by taking a job at the Heywood Hill Bookshop in Mayfair, hoping to make ends meet, and discovers a new life.

London, 1941. The Blitz. When a Royal Navy memo arrives at head office, requesting female recruits to sign up as motorcycle dispatch riders, delivering highly classified orders across the country, three women jump at the chance to sign up for the most dangerous jobs in London.

As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything - beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses - but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets.

Twenty-five years after the end of the war, Noah Ainsworth is still preoccupied with those perilous, exhilarating years as a British SOE operative in France. A head injury sustained on his final operation has caused frustrating gaps in his memory—in particular about the agent who saved his life during that mission gone wrong, whose real name he never knew, nor whether she even survived the war.

Paris, 1944: The war is nearly over, but for members of the Resistance in occupied France, it is more dangerous than ever before. Twenty-five-year-old Gabby Foucher loathes the Nazis, though as the concierge of 10 rue Royale, she does her best to avoid conflict - unlike her bolder sister Yvette, who finds trouble at every turn.

A powerful and resonant novel from Tom Franklin - critically acclaimed author of Smonk and Hell at the Breech - Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter tells the riveting story of two boyhood friends, torn apart by circumstance, who are brought together again by a terrible crime in a small Mississippi town. An extraordinary novel that seamlessly blends elements of crime and Southern literary fiction, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a must for readers of Larry Brown, Pete Dexter, Ron Rash, and Dennis Lehane.

In this new novel from the author of The Dressmaker’s Dowry, two young women two generations apart discover the joy and heartbreak of following their dreams. Aspiring Hollywood actress Violet makes a shocking choice in 1940, and 70 years later, Mari sets out to discover what happened on that long ago summer. Santa Cruz, Summer 1940: When auburn-haired Violet Harcourt is crowned Miss California on the boardwalk of her hometown, she knows she is one step closer to her cherished dream: a Hollywood screen test.

On any particular day, thousands upon thousands of people pass through New York City's Grand Central Terminal, through the whispering gallery, beneath the ceiling of stars, and past the information booth and its beckoning four-faced clock, to whatever destination is calling them. It is a place where people come to say hello and good-bye. And each person has a story to tell.

Olivia Limoges is the subject of constant gossip. Ever since her mysterious return to the small coastal town of Oyster Bay, North Carolina, Olivia has kept to herself, her dog, and her unfinished novel. With a little cajoling from charming writer Camden Ford, she agrees to join the Bayside Book Writers to break her writer's block and even make a few friends. But when townspeople start turning up dead with haiku poems left by the bodies, anyone with a flair for language is suddenly suspect.

In 1965 Manhattan, patrons flock to Masha’s to savor its brisket bourguignon and impeccable service and to admire its dashing owner and head chef Peter Rashkin, the most eligible bachelor in town. But Peter does not care for the parade of eligible women who come to the restaurant hoping to catch his eye. Running Masha’s consumes him, as does his terrible guilt over surviving the horrors of the Nazi death camp while his wife, Masha - the restaurant’s namesake - and two young daughters perished. Then exquisitely beautiful June Bouquet, an up-and-coming young model, appears at the restaurant, piercing Peter’s guard.

Simone Fleurier is wrenched from her home on a Provencal lavender farm at the age of 14 after the accidental death of her father. Forced to become a maid at the boarding house of her Aunt Augustine in Marseilles, Simone's life is hard and impoverished. But one of her aunt's boarders, the beautiful Camille Casal, a star at the local music hall, gives Simone a dream: that one day she too will be a famous singer and dancer.

When local nobleman Étienne de Bremont falls to his death from the family château, it sets the historic town of Aix-en-Provence abuzz with rumors. The once-idyllic town suddenly seems filled with people who could have benefited from Bremont's death - including his playboy brother, François, who's heavily in debt and mixed up with some unsavory characters. But just as the list of suspects is being narrowed down, another death occurs. And this time, there can be no doubt - it's murder.

Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.

Josie O'Conner travels to San Francisco in 1951 to locate her gay brother, a private dick investigating a blackmail ring targeting lesbians and gay men. Jimmy's friends claim that just before he disappeared he became a rat, informing the cops on the bar community. Josie adopts Jimmy's trousers and wingtips, battling to clear his name, halt the blackmailers, and exact justice for the many queer corpses.

Cassie settled down too young, marrying her first serious boyfriend. Now, 10 years later, she is betrayed and broken. With her marriage in tatters and no career or home of her own, she needs to work out where she belongs in the world and who she really is. So begins a yearlong trial as Cassie leaves her sheltered life in rural Scotland to stay with each of her best friends in the most glamorous cities in the world: New York, Paris and London.

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.

After her grandmother Arlette's death, Betty is finally ready to begin her life. She had forfeited university, parties, boyfriends, summer jobs in order to care for Arlette. Now she's ready for whatever life throws at her, and, since the will included a beneficiary unknown to her who lives in the city, she heads there to find the mysterious woman. In 1920s London, Arlette is starting her new life in a time of postwar change. Beautiful and charismatic, she's drawn into a hedonistic world, but then tragedy strikes, and she flees back to her childhood home....

In 1961, two years after the Communist revolution, Lucía Álvarez still leads a carefree life, dreaming of parties and her first crush. But when the soldiers come to her sleepy Cuban town, everything begins to change. Freedoms are stripped away. Neighbors disappear. And soon, Lucía's parents make the heart-wrenching decision to send her and her little brother to the United States - on their own. Suddenly plunked down in Nebraska with well-meaning strangers, Lucía struggles to adapt to a new country, a new language, a new way of life. But what of her old life?

In November 1944, 18-year-old June Walker boards an unmarked bus, destined for a city that doesn't officially exist. Oak Ridge, Tennessee has sprung up in a matter of months - a town of trailers and segregated houses, 24-hour cafeterias, and constant security checks. There, June joins hundreds of other young girls operating massive machines whose purpose is never explained. They know they are helping to win the war, but must ask no questions and reveal nothing to outsiders.

Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.

In the summer of 1940, ambitious young American journalist Ruby Sutton gets her big break: the chance to report on the European war as a staff writer for Picture Weekly newsmagazine in London. She jumps at the chance, for it's an opportunity not only to prove herself, but also to start fresh in a city and country that know nothing of her humble origins. But life in besieged Britain tests Ruby in ways she never imagined.

Journalist Charlie Cates has always believed in facts, in what can be proved - her career depends on it. Which is why she has never truly accepted the supernatural visions that guide her to children in danger. After her work on a high-profile missing-child case brings unwanted fame, she reluctantly flees to the lush Big Island of Hawaii with her best friend, Rae. Determined to avoid her disturbing visions, Charlie begins writing what seems to be a harmless interview of a prominent volcanologist. But soon, she's haunted by dreams of a local girl who went missing six weeks earlier.

Weaver and fiber artist Edith “Pen” Meyer knew her friend Sandy Merritt’s relationship with a married man was wrong. She had even urged Sandy to take out a restraining order against Kenneth Carpenter. Which was why her call to Sandy on February 23, 2005, seemed to come from out of the blue. During it, she told Sandy to drop the restraining order and get back together with Ken. Pen was never seen again. One man stood to gain from Pen’s disappearance: Ken Carpenter. But evidence was bleak: no blood, no DNA, no body. Until detectives found notes hidden....

Thirteen years ago, Jori Trahan’s boyfriend vanished without a trace. Now, after moving back home to Alabama to care for her ailing grandmother and autistic brother, she comes face-to-face with the deadly mystery behind his disappearance. Jori has a rare form of synesthesia, meaning she can “hear” colors; to her, tones of voice are as unique as fingerprints. With the help of this ability and a sympathetic cop, Jori comes dangerously close to uncovering the truth. But those responsible will go to any length - including murder - to keep their dark secrets buried.

For the first 18 years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold. Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar. After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes.

Finally, Cath has met someone: a man she loves, Robin, and who adores her in return. And after years of managing fine on her own, running a successful business, raising her son and caring for her elderly mother, she feels she deserves some happiness. She expected everyone to be delighted for her. But her friends and family are suspicious of Robin. And Rebecca, a desperate single mother whom Cath has hired as a live-in housekeeper, doesn’t trust him either.

In the tourist town of Wharton, on the coast of Lake Superior, Tess Bell is renovating her old family home into a bed-and-breakfast during the icy dead of winter… As the house’s restoration commences, a shuttered art studio is revealed. Inside are paintings Tess’s late grandfather, beloved and celebrated artist Sebastian Bell, hid away for generations. But these appear to be the works of a twisted mind, almost unrecognizable as paintings she and others familiar with his art would expect.

It’s summer in New York City and Faye Walker has it all. She’s not only scored one of the most highly coveted internships in all of Wall Street, she’s also just met the head-over-heels love of her life. With her natural-born gift for numbers and a work ethic that knows no bounds, Faye is a shoo-in for a full-time position at the illustrious merchant bank Greene Brothers Hale. Then, just as she awaits her offer and her signing bonus, a treacherous betrayal arrives to shatter Faye’s plans and her young life.

This bundle includes the first three books in the Secret, Book, and Scone Society series. In the first book of the series, Nora Pennington forms the Secret, Book, and Scone Society. As they untangle a web of corruption, they discover their own courage, purpose, and a sisterhood that will carry them through every challenge—proving it’s never too late to turn the page and start over.

Lyndsey was once a top handler in the Moscow Field Station, where she was known as the "human lie detector" and praised for recruiting some of the most senior Russian officials. But now, three Russian assets have been exposed - including one of her own - and the CIA is convinced there's a mole in the department. With years of work in question and lives on the line, Lyndsey is thrown back into life at the agency, this time tracing the steps of those closest to her.

As children, Sam and Elli were two halves of a perfect whole: gorgeous identical twins whose parents sometimes couldn’t even tell them apart. They fell asleep to the sound of each other’s breath at night, holding hands in the dark. And once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role. But as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker: married to a real estate lawyer, living in a house just blocks from the beach.