But on Miranda’s twelfth birthday, Billy has a mysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda’s life. She doesn’t hear from him again until sixteen years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy—and one final scavenger hunt.

    Benji Cooper is one of the only black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. He spends his falls and winters going to roller-disco bar mitzvahs, playing too much Dungeons and Dragons, and trying to catch glimpses of nudity on late-night cable TV. After a tragic mishap on his first day of high school—when Benji reveals his deep enthusiasm for the horror movie magazine Fangoria—his social doom is sealed for the next four years. But every summer, Benji escapes to the Hamptons, to Sag Harbor, where a small community of African American professionals have built a world of their own. Because their parents come out only on weekends, he and his friends are left to their own devices for three glorious months. And although he’s just as confused about this all-black refuge as he is about the white world he negotiates the rest of the year, he thinks that maybe this summer things will be different. If all goes according to plan, that is. There will be trials and tribulations, of course. There will be complicated new handshakes to fumble through, and state-of-the-art profanity to master. He will be tested by contests big and small, by his misshapen haircut (which seems to have a will of its own), by the New Coke Tragedy of ’85, and by his secret Lite FM addiction. But maybe, with a little luck, things will turn out differently this summer.In this deeply affectionate and fiercely funny coming-of-age novel, Whitehead—using the perpetual mortification of teenage existence and the desperate quest for reinvention—lithely probes the elusive nature of identity, both personal and communal.

    Equal parts modern-day thriller, historical fiction, and love story, with one foot in present-day Rome and New York City, and the other in Rome some 1600 years ago.Photojournalist Josh Ryder survives a terrorist's bomb, only to be haunted by near-hallucinatory memories of a past life in Rome as a pagan priest whose dangerous congress with Sabina, one of the Vestal Virgins, poses a transgression so serious the lovers will face a certain death if exposed. Scents of jasmine and sandalwood and images of furtive liaisons and violence descend on Josh at will, pulling him to an ancient yet strangely familiar Roman burial chamber harboring the remains of a woman clutching a wooden box.A trail of present-day murders takes the reader deeper into a labyrinth at whose heart lies the enigma of a collection of ancient gems, or memory stones, whose origins trace back to both ancient Egypt and India. The stones' promise to "assist the wearer in reaching his next incarnation" sets the ancient and modern worlds on a collision course.The question of who we are cannot be asked without first asking who we were, according to the author. Rose attempts to answer that question based on her own reincarnation research and on the writings of others, spanning thousands of years.

    Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost. Now, his immortal brethren have decided David must return and leave his family in Miami. Instead, David vows to invoke a forbidden ritual to keep Jessica and his daughter with him forever. Harrowing, engrossing and skillfully rendered, My Soul to Keep traps Jessica between the desperation of immortals who want to rob her of her life and a husband who wants to rob her of her soul. With deft plotting and an unforgettable climax, this tour de force reminiscent of early Anne Rice will win Due a new legion of fans.

    Money is personified in this haunting story, which chronicles its troubled history following the arrival of the Hilson and Bryant families.Tass Hilson and Emmett Till were young and in love when Emmett was brutally murdered in 1955. Anxious to escape the town, Tass marries Maximillian May and relocates to Detroit.Forty years later, after the death of her husband, Tass returns to Money and fantasy takes flesh when Emmett Till's spirit is finally released from the dank, dark waters of the Tallahatchie River. The two lovers are reunited, bringing the story to an enchanting and profound conclusion.Gathering of Waters mines the truth about Money, Mississippi, as well as the town's families, and threads their history over decades. The bare-bones realism--both disturbing and riveting--combined with a magical realm in which ghosts have the final say, is reminiscent of Toni Morrison's Beloved.

    When her father gets popped in an armed robbery and her mother turns to drugs, Saucy is left to scratch out a life for herself on the streets of Harlem, and this city-slick vixen refuses to become a victim. Young, hot, and hungry for the spotlight, Saucy has a full package and uses her assets to get whatever she wants. 128th Street has its own rules, and she knows them well. With sex as her weapon of choice, Saucy uses her beauty and her body to hustle her way straight into the heart of the hip-hop underworld, preying upon any man—or woman—who might help her get ahead. But Saucy just can't get enough. Her calculating nature and insatiable appetite for power and prestige tempt her into dangerous waters, and before long she finds herself in too deep. The shot callers of the hip-hop world have a few tricks for Saucy—a gutter plan to force her back onto the very streets that she came from. But Saucy refuses to go down easy. She plots her revenge against some of the most powerful playas in the music industry, never suspecting that her enemies will fight back—and fight back hard.

    It's a mind journey that puts life's realitites into words. This anthology is the first of its kind to take such an array of authors, and their true to the life gritty tales, and allow their words to explode in one setting.

    Though the message on the kitchen white board is written in Marley's hand, her mother Rachel knows there has to be some other explanation. Marley would never run away.As the days pass and it sinks in that the impossible has occurred, Rachel and her husband Paul are informed that the police have "limited resources." If they want their 14-year-old daughter back, they will have to find her themselves. Desperation becomes determination when Paul turns to Facebook and Twitter, and launches FindMarley.com.But Marley isn't the only one with secrets.With public exposure comes scrutiny, and when Rachel blows a television interview, the dirty speculation begins. Now, the blogosphere is convinced Rachel is hiding something. It's not what they think; Rachel would never hurt Marley. Not intentionally, anyway. But when it's discovered that she's lied, even to the police, the devoted mother becomes a suspect in Marley's disappearance.Is Marley out there somewhere, watching it all happen, or is the truth something far worse?

    Secrets that will destroy far more than one small town.Wendy Davidson is caught in the middle. She's a recovering cult survivor who takes refuge in Summerville on her way to visit her estranged mother. And with her, four strangers, any of whom could be the next victim . . . or the killer.

    So is Earl V. Pike. So is a smart, beautiful NYC detective named Casey Spandau. For Jack, it began when Earl asked for a little favor--one former soldier to another. With Jack’s son in serious trouble with the law and his shipping company, Black Water Transit, about to hit the big time, Jack saw a chance to be a good father, a good citizen, and a good CEO--by ratting out Earl V. Pike to the feds. It was a monumental mistake.Now Pike is mad. Bodies are piling up. And all the backstabbers are coming out of the woodwork in Jack’s rattled world. Jack’s only hope: detective Casey Spandau, who began her week hunting for a sex criminal and ended up with Earl V. Pike--a man using guile, skill, and one astounding long-range weapon to kill everyone who gets in his way. For Casey and Jack Vermillion, making Earl V. Pike angry has turned into a cross-country nightmare. But taking him down will be even worse.

    from Middle English "wenchel," 1 a: a girl, maid, young woman; a female child.Tawawa House in many respects is like any other American resort before the Civil War. Situated in Ohio, this idyllic retreat is particularly nice in the summer when the Southern humidity is too much to bear. The main building, with its luxurious finishes, is loftier than the white cottages that flank it, but then again, the smaller structures are better positioned to catch any breeze that may come off the pond. And they provide more privacy, which best suits the needs of the Southern white men who vacation there every summer with their black, enslaved mistresses. It's their open secret.Lizzie, Reenie, and Sweet are regulars at Tawawa House. They have become friends over the years as they reunite and share developments in their own lives and on their respective plantations. They don't bother too much with questions of freedom, though the resort is situated in free territory–but when truth-telling Mawu comes to the resort and starts talking of running away, things change.To run is to leave behind everything these women value most–friends and families still down South–and for some it also means escaping from the emotional and psychological bonds that bind them to their masters. When a fire on the resort sets off a string of tragedies, the women of Tawawa House soon learn that triumph and dehumanization are inseparable and that love exists even in the most inhuman, brutal of circumstances–all while they are bearing witness to the end of an era.An engaging, page-turning, and wholly original novel, Wench explores, with an unflinching eye, the moral complexities of slavery.

    From her past, from her ex, and from her own secrets. When she turns up alone in the remote mining town of Blackmore asking about Shayna Fowles, the local girl who disappeared, everyone wants to know who Clare really is and what she's hiding. As it turns out, she's hiding a lot, including what ties her to Shayna in the first place. But everyone in this place is hiding something from Jared, Shayna's golden-haired ex-husband, to Charlie, the charming small-town drug pusher, to Derek, Shayna's overly involved family doctor, to Louise and Wilfred, her distraught parents.Did Shayna flee? Was she killed? Is it possible she's still alive?As Clare uncovers the mysteries around Shayna's disappearance, she must confront her own demons, moving us deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of lies and making us question what it is she's really running from. Twisting and electrifying, this is a get-under-your-skin thriller that will make you question what it means to lose yourself and find yourself in the most unlikely places.

     Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. What really happened? No one has a clue. Twenty-two people are questioned, but nothing is found. So one by one, Pepper narrows the suspects down. It becomes clear that everybody has something to hide. The closer Pepper gets to truth, the more everyone lies. Somebody saw something. Someone knows the truth. Someone is a murderer. The question is…who?

    But as he enters his parents home, what he finds will change his life forever. A devastating tragedy quickly turns into a nightmare when police detectives find it impossible to come to any single conclusion except that Brad is a cold-blooded murderer. Unwilling to become the third victim of the terrible wrong that has been done to his family, Brad, with the help of a sympathetic detective, must find the real killer.

    He’s dazzled by what they’ve accomplished, and they seem to think he has the potential to be as successful as they are. They invite him for a weekend away from it all—no wives, no cell phones, no talk of business. But far from home and cut off from everyone he loves, he discovers a disturbing secret that challenges some of his deepest convictions…Martin finds out that his glittering new friends are part of a secret society dedicated to the preservation of the institution of slavery—but this time around, the black men are called “Master.” Joining them seems to guarantee a future without limits; rebuking them almost certainly guarantees his death. Trapped inside a picture-perfect, make-believe world that is home to a frightening reality, Martin must find a way out that will allow him to stay alive without becoming the very thing he hates.A novel of rage and compassion, good and evil, trust and betrayal, Forty Acres is the thought-provoking story of one man’s desperate attempt to escape the clutches of a terrifying new moral order.