She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place. Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the little lies that can turn lethal.

    A female officer who is attacked in the line of duty must protect her own husband from his worst impulses in this short story, first published in The Blue Religion (Michael Connelly, ed.) and recognized as one of 2009's Best American Mystery Stories (Jeffery Deaver, ed.).

     Book 1 With his focus fully on work at Anderson Investigations, wolf-shifter Joel Halbrook has no room for romance. Or so he thinks. When he delves into solving mysterious paranormal occurrences, he meets feisty redhead, Kylie Brannigan, and everything changes. Having a temper to match her hair, Kylie is a sassy young human woman, or so she thinks. As more and more odd things happen, like emitting fire from her fingers and healing an injured bird with her bare hands, her life is turned upside-down. With this mind-boggling discovery as well as a rogue dragon-shifter trying to capture her, adding the fact that she’s falling for the over-bearing Joel Halbrook is almost too much to handle. Will Joel and Kylie be able to put their stubborn ways aside, and find romance, all while a rogue versus council paranormal war is starting? Book 2 Beauty, brains and perky personality sum up Claudia Ruiz,the fox-shifter at Anderson Investigations. As the resident computer genius, Claudia is all about hacking into rogue systems and inventing gadgets during the rogue vs. council war. Enter Aiden McKenzie, stage left, the newbie in her tabletop RPG group, and she’s thrown off her usual, geek-girl game. This fellow fox-shifter is intensely handsome, moody…and seems to hate Claudia at first sight. But when he asks her out and they begin to date, it’s clear that Aiden actually likes her. Yet there’s more to him than meets the eye. Being on on several top-secret, war-related missions,Aiden is instructed to not get truly close to anyone. The problem is, he’s truly falling for Claudia Ruiz, and has to pull a triple-charade. Will Claudia and Aiden be able to follow their hearts with so many lies and the increasingly dangerouswar? Book 3 Having run away from her rogue background, Sasha Dostoyevsky is a self-sufficient, commanding Wiccan woman who specializes in council-side rogue investigations. So, when dragon-shifter Keith Anderson, of Anderson Investigations, is having difficulty in solving a war-related mystery with rogues controlling some humans like puppets, Sasha is flown over from Moscow to help. But the usually even-tempered Keith bristles at the prospect of needing help, and even more at the cold and controlling but beautiful consultant. With her traumatic rogue past, Keith’s resistance to help and an increasingly terrifying situation where the rogues begin to control paranormals like pawns too, will romance have a chance? Or will the rogues take ultimate control and claim worldwide victory? Bonus series: Moonrise Security included.

    In her provocative and riveting third novel, Paula Daly focuses her masterful eye for psychological suspense and family drama on an indecent proposal that has fatal repercussions. Single mother Roz has a reached breaking-point. After the dissolution of her marriage, Roz’s business has gone under, debts are racking up, the rent is late (again), and she's struggling to provide for her nine-year-old son, who is starting to misbehave in school. Roz is in trouble. Real trouble. When Roz returns home from work one day and finds an eviction notice, she knows that it’s time for action—she has two weeks to find a solution otherwise they will be kicked out of their home. Increasingly desperate, Roz doesn’t know where to turn. Then the perfect opportunity presents itself. At her sister’s fortieth birthday party, Roz meets Scott Elias—wealthy, powerful, and very married. But the impression Roz leaves on him is indelible. He tracks her down and makes Roz an offer to spend the night with him—for money. He wants no-strings-attached intimacy and can guarantee total discretion. Could it be as simple as it sounds? With that kind of cash, Roz could clear her debts and get her life back on track. But as the situation spirals out of her control, Roz is forced to do things she never thought herself capable of. Can she ever set things right again?

    At the end of a long winter, in bucolic Ridgedale, New Jersey, the body of an infant is discovered in the woods near the town’s prestigious university campus. No one knows who the baby is, or how her body ended up out there. But there is no shortage of opinions. When freelance journalist, and recent Ridgedale transplant, Molly Anderson is unexpectedly called upon to cover the story for the Ridegdale Reader, it’s a risk, given the severe depression that followed the loss of her own baby. But the bigger threat comes when Molly unearths some of Ridgedale’s darkest secrets, including a string of unreported sexual assaults that goes back twenty years. Meanwhile, Sandy, a high school dropout, searches for her volatile and now missing mother, and PTA president Barbara struggles to help her young son, who’s suddenly having disturbing outbursts. Told from the perspectives of Molly, Barbara, and Sandy, Kimberly McCreight’s taut and profoundly moving novel unwinds the tangled truth about the baby’s death revealing that these three women have far more in common than they realized. And that their lives are more intertwined with what happened to the baby than they ever could have imagined.

    The Great War. Although the world is at war, Delia Markham is adjusting to her job as a typewriting teacher at the Glennon Normal School in the fall term of 1918. Her new life revolves around teaching future teachers. It isn’t an easy transition from her former assignment as Yeoman (F) in the U. S. Naval Reserve. When the call was made for women to help in the war effort, Delia was one of the first to sign up for a four-year enlistment using a loophole in the language that allowed women to join the service. That loophole relieved men of the clerical duties that kept them from combat. It offered women equal pay and rank for the same work. Thousands rushed forward to fill that gap. To differentiate them from other yeomen, the (f) designation was used. After spending years caring for her parents and ultimately losing them both, joining the service in the spring of 1917 was an exciting opportunity. One she relished for the time she put in as the amanuensis to a high-ranking officer. Her life with the admiral and his wife allowed her to grow, learn new skills, and enjoy new experiences until she was sidelined in the summer of 1918 by an incident that meant the abrupt end of her military career. A career that was as exciting as it was fulfilling. Circumstances and a remaining family connection brought Delia to the Glennon Normal School when other doors were closed to her. She was happy to have the job and her new home with her cousin Hazel, the head chef at the school. But life at the teachers’ training school isn’t quite as exciting as her time in the service. Not until a mystery at Glennon Hall is followed by a murder and Delia finds herself drawn into both. Suddenly, some of the past excitement found its way back into her life.

    In the days it takes the authorities to make an identification, the residents rekindle stories, rumors, and recollections both painful and poignant as they revisit Jess’s troubled history. In resurrecting the past, the people of Sycamore will find clarity, unexpected possibility, and a way forward for their lives.

    New and revised edition. Anna Kronberg lives in Victorian London’s worst rookery, offering medical treatment to prostitutes, vagrants, and criminals. To her, plugging holes and mopping up blood is normal. Stitching the slashed face of a young prostitute is not. Witnesses refuse to talk. The police can’t be bothered with yet another injured whore. But whispers are spreading about a man who pays well for a few harmless knife marks. No one dares reveal the man’s identity. Only Garret O’Hare - a thief Anna barely knows - reluctantly agrees to help her investigate the assault. But when the injured girl disappears, a veil of silence descends upon the slum. And Anna learns that she is no longer the hunter, but the hunted. Warning: medical procedures, poverty, and prostitution are depicted without apology. For fans of Caleb Carr, Louise Penny, and Anne Perry.

    “What is this fearsome thing I see?” the young high school English teacher whispers, mimicking Shakespeare. Polished boots, pressed jeans, fresh white shirts, Stetsons—her uncles’ suspiciously clean visiting clothes are a disturbing sign. The three bring shocking news: The man convicted of murdering Jody’s father is being released from prison and returning to the small town of Rose, Kansas. It has been twenty-six years since that stormy night when, as baby Jody lay asleep in her crib, her father was shot and killed and her mother disappeared, presumed dead. Neither the protective embrace of Jody’s uncles nor the safe haven of her grandparents’ ranch could erase the pain caused by Billy Crosby on that catastrophic night. Now Billy Crosby has been granted a new trial, thanks in large part to the efforts of his son, Collin, a lawyer who has spent most of his life trying to prove his father’s innocence. As Jody lives only a few doors down from the Crosbys, she knows that sooner or later she’ll come face-to-face with the man who she believes destroyed her family. What she doesn’t expect are the heated exchanges with Collin. Having grown up practically side by side in this very small town, Jody and Collin have had a long history of carefully avoiding each other’s eyes. Now Jody discovers that underneath their antagonism is a shared sense of loss that no one else could possibly understand. As she revisits old wounds, startling revelations compel her to uncover the dangerous truth about her family’s tragic past. Engrossing, lyrical, and suspenseful, The Scent of Rain and Lightning captures the essence of small-town America—its heartfelt intimacy and its darkest secrets—where through struggle and hardship people still dare to hope for a better future. For Jody Linder, maybe even love.

    She’s exactly the right person to get it done. In her personal life, Bailey works hard to control her sociopathic tendencies. But on the job, her cold logic comes in handy.The agent soon suspects that a rare-metal shortage may be the link between the disappearances and that the motive is far more dangerous than she imagined. With the tech market in turmoil and prices sky-high, electronics companies and their power-hungry CEOs are ready to do anything—even kill—to keep production lines going.When a third scientist disappears, Bailey throws caution aside to track the crimes to their source. But the clock is ticking on the scientist’s life, and when the bureau pulls its support, Bailey is on her own to stop the meltdown.

    Except it is your house. And you didn’t sell it. When Fiona Lawson comes home to find strangers moving into her house, she's sure there's been a mistake. She and her estranged husband, Bram, have a modern co-parenting arrangement: bird's nest custody, where each parent spends a few nights a week with their two sons at the prized family home to maintain stability for their children. But the system built to protect their family ends up putting them in terrible jeopardy. In a domino effect of crimes and misdemeanors, the nest comes tumbling down.Now Bram has disappeared and so have Fiona's children. As events spiral well beyond her control, Fiona will discover just how many lies her husband was weaving and how little they truly knew each other. But Bram's not the only one with things to hide, and some secrets are best kept to oneself, safe as houses.

    But she’s left with a traumatic brain injury and a terrifying reality: she can’t remember anything.Left in the care of her sister, Grace returns to the family’s secluded old farmhouse to recover—but within an hour of her return, the police arrive. Grace’s boyfriend has been murdered. Without any memory, Grace has no alibi.With suspicion weighing heavily on her and flashes of memory returning, Grace searches for clues to her past. But with every glimpse, her anxiety grows. There is something about the house, her family, her childhood…perhaps the accident isn’t the only reason she can’t remember. Are the dark recesses of her mind hiding something even more sinister and terrifying than she could ever imagine?And someone is watching. Someone willing to kill again to protect a secret.

    Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.