On a quiet night in their tranquil suburban home, the Fulton family awakens to a nightmare. Four armed men force bank manager Dan Fulton to steal a quarter million dollars from his branch—strapping remote-detonation bombs on him, his wife, Lori, and their young son.

The FBI moves swiftly with a major investigation while Kate Page, a reporter with a newswire service, digs deep into the story. In the wake of the Fulton family’s abduction, questions emerge, including one of the most troubling: is the case linked to Lori Fulton’s tragic past?

Working as fast as they can, Kate and the investigators inch closer to a devastating truth—it’s not only the Fultons’ lives at stake, but thousands of others . . . and every second counts in the race to save them.

She won’t be a victim ever again . . .

Four years ago, Skye Kellerman was attacked in her own bed. She managed to fend off her knife-wielding assailant, but the trauma changed everything about her life. As a result of that night, she joined two friends—also survivors—in starting The Last Stand, an organization to help victims of crime.

Now, Skye’s would-be rapist is getting out of prison. She knows that he hasn’t forgotten that her testimony cost him his reputation—and his freedom.

Sacramento detective David Willis, who investigated her case, believes this man is a clear and present danger, guilty of other crimes, as well. And he’s free to terrorize Skye again. Unless she can fight back. And, with David’s help, that’s exactly what she plans to do . . .

Librarian Molly Kimball and her mother, Nina, need a change. So when a letter arrives from Nina’s Aunt Violet in Cambridge, England requesting their help running the family bookshop, they jump at the chance.

Thomas Marlowe—Manuscripts and Folios, is one of the oldest bookshops in Cambridge, and—unfortunately—customers can tell. When Molly and Nina arrive, spring has come to Cambridge and the famed Cambridge Literary Festival is underway. Determined to bring much-needed revenue to the bookstore, Molly invites Aunt Violet’s college classmate and famed poet Persephone Brightwell to hold a poetry reading in the shop. But the event ends in disaster when a guest is found dead—with Molly’s great-aunt’s knitting needle used as the murder weapon. While trying to clear Violet and keep the struggling shop afloat, Molly sifts through secrets past and present, untangling a web of blackmail, deceit, and murder.

Every word in his old letter spells mortification.

There was only one reason young Harrison Chase moved away from his idyllic country upbringing to the long dark hours of working in a London factory—he was bound and determined to make his fortune and deserve a chance to court Christine Stone. But as years passed and his dream of making a fortune came closer into view, he realized there were a lot more important things in life than young, unrequited love.

In the middle of his charge to reverse the Corn Laws, and make food affordable to workers struggling to feed their families, his housekeeper helpfully mails a letter she finds languishing amongst his things. Not just any letter—a six-year-old love letter to Christine. With no other choice, he rushes back to his childhood home on Christine’s family estate.

Today there are two Americas, separate and unequal, one educated and one not. And these two tribes—the resentful “non-college” crowd and their diploma-bearing yet increasingly disillusioned adversaries—seem on the brink of a civil war. The strongest determinant of whether a voter was likely to support Donald Trump in 2016 was whether or not they attended college, and the degree of loathing they reported feeling toward the so-called “knowledge economy” of clustered, educated elites. Somewhere in the winding last half-century of the United States, the quest for a college diploma devolved from being proof of America’s commitment to learning, science, and social mobility into a kind of Hunger Games contest to the death. That quest has infuriated both the millions who got shut out and millions who got into deep debt to stay afloat.

How did trade evolve to the point where we don’t think twice about biting into an apple from the other side of the world?

In A Splendid Exchange, William J. Bernstein, bestselling author of The Birth of Plenty, traces the story of global commerce from its prehistoric origins to the myriad controversies surrounding it today. Journey from ancient sailing ships carrying silk from China to Rome in the second century to the rise and fall of the Portuguese monopoly on spices in the sixteenth; from the American trade battles of the early twentieth century to the modern era of televisions from Taiwan, lettuce from Mexico, and T-shirts from China.