There, far from prying eyes, the government keeps in "deep storage" former intelligence employees whose psychiatric state make them a security risk to their own government, people whose ramblings might jeopardize ongoing operations or prove dangerously inconvenient.One of these employees, former Consular Operations agent Hal Ambler, is one of the few who is so dangerous that he is in complete isolation from other patients, kept heavily medicated and closely watched. But there's one critical difference between Ambler and the other patients in the facility: Ambler isn't crazy.With the help of a sympathetic nurse, Ambler manages to first clear his mind of the drug-induced haze and then executes a daring escape. On the loose and barely one step ahead of the retrieval teams sent after him, he is out to discover who had him stashed in the psychiatric hospital and why.But the world he returns to isn't the one he so clearly remembers - friends and longtime associates don't recognize him, and there are no official records of any person named Hal Ambler. With no resources and his unknown enemies closing in on him, Ambler has to uncover the truth of who he was and figure out what it is about him - remember what he knows - that makes him such a danger that someone is willing to risk everything to see him dead.

    At the beginning of Pudd'nhead Wilson a young slave woman, fearing for her infant son's life, exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's.  From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels.  On its surface, Pudd'nhead Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery:  reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution.  Yet it is not a mystery novel.  Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes.  Written in 1894, Pudd'nhead Wilson glistens with characteristic Twain humor, with suspense, and with pointed irony:  a gem among the author's later works.

    There's Todd, the handsome stay-at-home dad dubbed "The Prom King" by the moms at the playground, and his wife, Kathy, a documentary filmmaker envious of the connection Todd has forged with their toddler son. And there's Sarah, a lapsed feminist surprised to find she's become a typical wife in a traditional marriage, and her husband, Richard, who is becoming more and more involved with an internet fantasy life than with his own wife and child. And then there's Mary Ann, who has life all figured out, down to a scheduled roll in the hay with her husband every Tuesday at nine P.M.They all raise their kids in the kind of quiet suburb where nothing ever seems to happen - until one eventful summer, when a convicted child molester moves back to town, and two parents begin an affair that goes further than either of them could ever have imagined.

    At 25 she begins to unearth secrets about family, friends, her past, and her altered reality in this journey through truth and forgiveness.

    She returns to New York still beautiful but oddly unrecognizable, a virtual stranger in the world she once effortlessly occupied.With the surreal authority of a David Lynch, Jennifer Egan threads Charlotte’s narrative with those of other casualties of our infatuation with the image. There’s a deceptively plain teenaged girl embarking on a dangerous secret life, an alcoholic private eye, and an enigmatic stranger who changes names and accents as he prepares an apocalyptic blow against American society. As these narratives inexorably converge, Look at Me becomes a coolly mesmerizing intellectual thriller of identity and imposture.

    Frado becomes the servant of the Bellmonts, a lower-middle-class white family in the free North, while slavery is still legal in the South, and suffers numerous abuses in their household. Frado's story is a tragic one; having left the Bellmonts, she eventually marries a black fugitive slave, who later abandons her.

    Few writers possess Hailey's ability to combine careful, accurate research with a profound sense of human drama. (Doubleday)

    But when the sun went down, her life was an endless, faceless whirl of bars and beds and men she'd never seen before and wouldn't see again. If she couldn't find love, she took chances on men who were better than no men at all. And learned, with each new night and each new nightmare, that finding her man was only the beginning.

    It is a tale of love and courage, of power abused, and of the terrible choice between family loyalty and justice.

    The serial murderer has been dubbed “the Indian Killer” because he scalps his victims and adorns their bodies with owl feathers. As the city consumes itself in a nightmare frenzy of racial tension, a possible suspect emerges: John Smith. An Indian raised by whites, John is lost between cultures. He fights for a sense of belonging that may never be his—but has his alienation made him angry enough to kill? Alexie traces John Smith’s rage with scathing wit and masterly suspense.In the electrifying Indian Killer, a national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book, Sherman Alexie delivers both a scintillating thriller and a searing parable of race, identity, and violence.

    But when his son is taken away from him, he's left with nothing but the Memphis bar he manages. Then he hires Fay, a young white waitress, who has a volatile brother named Carl in tow. Nickel finds himself consumed with the idea of Taft -- Fay and Carl's dead father -- and begins to reconstruct the life of a man he never met. But his sympathies for these lost souls soon take him down a twisting path into the lives of strangers...

    She decides to marry him. Imagine Me Gone is the unforgettable story of what unfolds from this act of love and faith. At the heart of it is their eldest son, Michael, a brilliant, anxious music fanatic who makes sense of the world through parody. Over the span of decades, his younger siblings -- the savvy and responsible Celia and the ambitious and tightly controlled Alec -- struggle along with their mother to care for Michael's increasingly troubled and precarious existence. Told in alternating points of view by all five members of the family, this searing, gut-wrenching, and yet frequently hilarious novel brings alive with remarkable depth and poignancy the love of a mother for her children, the often inescapable devotion siblings feel toward one another, and the legacy of a father's pain in the life of a family. With his striking emotional precision and lively, inventive language, Adam Haslett has given us something rare: a novel with the power to change how we see the most important people in our lives.

    Daniel Lowell and his partner, Dr. Stephanie D'Agostino, discover a new cloning procedure that utilizes stem cells to treat otherwise incurable and degenerative diseases, they know they've hit the medical jackpot. But with their cutting-edge method pending approval, they run into a roadblock by the name of Senator Ashley Butler, who views their technique as an attack on traditional American values. Then Butler is diagnosed with rapidly progressing Parkinson's disease, and he must make a Faustian pact with the very doctors whose groundbreaking technology he is trying to destroy: treatment in exchange for unwavering support.But the DNA transference procedure has never been tested before, and working under less than favorable conditions to keep the premature trial under wraps, the doctors place their careers--and their patient's life--at risk, all in the name of scientific progress. Once they hit the point of no return, they feel invincible, but when Butler starts experiencing violent, horrifying seizures, they realize their luck may have run out...

    What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization -- the Illuminati. In a desperate race to save the Vatican from a powerful time bomb, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the beautiful and mysterious scientist Vittoria Vetra. Together they embark on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, and deserted cathedrals, and into the depths of the most secretive vault on earth...the long-forgotten Illuminati lair.(back cover)

    Then she got a real life.... For nearly twenty years, quiet, unassuming Lillian Manville has devoted herself to her self-made billionaire husband -- and enjoyed a luxurious life of splendid homes, trips, jewels, and clothes. But when James Manville dies in a plane crash, Lillian's grief is compounded by a shocking mystery: all that Jimmie has left to her is an old farmhouse in tiny Calburn, Virginia. Now, Lillian's unexpected circumstances are leading her to a made-over life in Calburn, an exciting businessŠand a sweet new love with a handsome local man. But will she have the courage to unveil the truth surrounding a past scandal and the loss of her husband? The answers may be as close as the mulberry tree in her yard -- and Lillian must dig deep within herself to Wght the secrets and lies that threaten to uproot the past she cherished and the future she treasures....This lush bestseller shines with the passion, intrigue, and warmth that is Jude Deveraux at her best.