Alex Bledsoe’s The Hum and the Shiver was named one of the best fiction books of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews. Now Bledsoe returns to the isolated ridges and hollows of the Smoky Mountains to spin an equally enchanting tale of music and magic older than the hills.

Touched by a very public tragedy, musician Rob Quillen comes to Cloud County, Tennessee, in search of a song that might ease his aching heart. All he knows of the mysterious and reclusive Tufa is what he has read on the Internet: they are an enigmatic clan of swarthy, black-haired mountain people whose historical roots are lost in myth and controversy. Some say that when the first white settlers came to the Appalachians centuries ago, they found the Tufa already there. Others hint that Tufa blood brings special gifts.

Rob finds both music and mystery in the mountains: close-lipped locals guard their secrets, even as Rob gets caught up in a subtle power struggle he can’t begin to comprehend. A vacationing wife goes missing, raising suspicions of foul play. And a strange feral girl runs wild in the woods, howling in the night like a lost spirit.

Change is coming to Cloud County, and only the night wind knows what part Rob will play when the last leaf falls from the Widow’s Tree—and a timeless curse must at last be broken.

Join Jordy, Alex, and Chloe as they cross the portal from our world to a strange and wonderful place, accessible for just a moment through the trapdoor of the attic in their family home. From hat-stand forests to towering hills of old musical instruments, deserts of old books, and a great water-tank lake, the vast continent they stumble upon is one of limitless surprises—and that’s before they meet the inhabitants. The strange clans of small, lumpen people live in homes constructed from all manner of found things and drive vehicles powered by old sewing-machine parts. It is against this remarkable backdrop that the three children will embark on a spellbinding adventure to recover a prized possession, save a life, and—somehow—find a way back home.

A story of courage, loyalty, and friendship; of incredible landscapes, ingenious devices, and cunning plot twists; Attica has a richness and depth that will delight listeners of all ages.

As the US and global economies in the twenty-first century head toward a major recession and companies worldwide struggle to survive, one businessman is tempted to turn to crime. 

Two strong businessmen who run a colossal international management consulting and accounting firm find themselves battling one another to save it, each proposing a different way of preventing its collapse. One is the CEO and founder, an amoral, ruthless megalomaniac; the other is the senior-most executive who expects to succeed the CEO as head of the company and a principled but flawed idealist. They were once as close as father and son, the older man mentor to the younger. Now their relationship collapses along with the economy, as their firm loses one blue-chip corporate client after another. 

A series of financial crimes ensue, instigated by the CEO, who uses fraudulent accounting to appear to help clients make their estimated profits while using insider trading to reap millions in personal profits. With the end in sight, he absconds with millions of dollars that had been held in trust in a partners’ bonus pool, forcing the younger man to hire a private eye to hunt him down. 

From Rose Tremain comes the Booker Prize short-listed novel that “restored the historical novel to its rightful place of honor” (New York Times).

Robert Merivel, son of a glove maker and an aspiring physician, finds his fortunes transformed when he is given a position at the court of King Charles II. Merivel slips easily into a life of luxury and idleness, enthusiastically enjoying the women and wine of the vibrant Restoration age. But when he’s called on to serve the king in an unusual role, he transgresses the one law he is forbidden to break and is brutally cast out from his newfound paradise. Thus begins Merivel’s journey to self-knowledge, which will take him down into the lowest depths of seventeenth-century society.

In these Messenger Lectures, originally delivered at Cornell University and recorded for television by the BBC, Richard Feynman offers an overview of selected physical laws and gathers their common features into one broad principle of invariance. He maintains at the outset that the importance of a physical law is not “how clever we are to have found it out but…how clever nature is to pay attention to it” and steers his discussions toward a final exposition of the elegance and simplicity of all scientific laws. Rather than an essay on the most significant achievements in modern science, The Character of Physical Law is a statement of what is most remarkable in nature. Feynman’s enlightened approach, his wit, and his enthusiasm make this a memorable exposition of the scientist’s craft. The law of gravitation is the author’s principal example. Relating the details of its discovery and stressing its mathematical character, he uses it to demonstrate the essential interaction of mathematics and physics. He views mathematics as the key to any system of scientific laws, suggesting that if it were possible to fill out the structure of scientific theory completely, the result would be an integrated set of mathematical axioms. The principles of conservation, symmetry, and time irreversibility are then considered in relation to developments in classical and modern physics, and in his final lecture, Feynman develops his own analysis of the process and future of scientific discovery.

Like any set of oral reflections, The Character of Physical Law has special value as a demonstration of the mind in action. The reader is particularly lucky in Richard Feynman—one of the most eminent and imaginative modern physicists.

Stanley Booth, a member of the Rolling Stones’ inner circle, met the band just a few months before Brian Jones drowned in a swimming pool in 1969. He lived with them throughout their 1969 American tour, staying up all night together listening to blues, talking about music, ingesting drugs, and consorting with groupies. His thrilling account culminates with their final concert at Altamont Speedway—a nightmare of beating, stabbing, and killing that would signal the end of a generation’s dreams of peace and freedom. But while this book renders in fine detail the entire history of the Stones, paying special attention to the tragedy of Brian Jones, it is about much more than a writer and a rock band. It has been called—by Harold Brodkey and Robert Stone, among others—the best book ever written about the sixties. In a new afterword, Booth explains why this book took fifteen years to write—an astonishing story of drugs, jails, and disasters.

Earth is an old planet, and her teeming masses are running out of resources—and time. It is up to men such as Jeff Holman to discover a haven for Earth’s millions. Altair VI is one such planet, and Holman is determined to transform this world into one where the human race can survive.

Star probes long ago informed Earth that Altair VI had a flourishing ecology with one very tough beast at the top of the food chain, one that will have to be dealt with before the human colony ships arrive. The beast is not only tough, it is as smart as a man.

Holman is faced with a soul-wrenching decision—for to make Altair VI habitable for humans, all native life must die.

Winner of an Edgar Award for Best First Novel for Bent Road, Lori Roy returns with Until She Comes Home, a tale of spellbinding suspense in which murder crumbles the façade of a changing Detroit neighborhood.

In 1958 Detroit, neighbors on Alder Avenue struggle to care for one another amid a city rife with conflicts that threaten their peaceful street.

Grace, Alder’s only expectant mother, eagerly awaits her firstborn; her best friend Julia prepares to welcome twin nieces; and Malina sets the tone with her stylish dresses, tasteful home, and ironfisted stewardship of St. Alban’s bake sale.

Life erupts when childlike Elizabeth disappears while in the care of Grace and Julia. All the ladies fear that the recent murder of a black woman at the factory on Willingham Avenue where their husbands work may portend what has become of Elizabeth. They also fear what will become of Julia—the last person to see Elizabeth alive.

The men mount an around-the-clock search, leaving their families vulnerable to sinister elements hidden in plain sight. Only Grace knows what happened, but her mother warns her not to tell. “No man wants to know this about his wife.” Ashamed that her silence puts loved ones in harm’s way, Grace gravitates toward the women of Willingham Avenue, who recognize her suffering as their own. Through their acceptance, Grace conquers her fear and dares to act.

On Alder Avenue, vicious secrets bind friends, neighbors, and spouses. For the wicked among them, the walk home will be long.

In Shadow People, national bestselling author James Swain’s brilliant follow-up to Dark Magic, magician Peter Warlock has a dark secret. He’s a psychic who peers into the future, using the information to alert the authorities to pending trouble.

During a séance, Peter is confronted by a group of evil spirits called shadow people, beings who have the power to kidnap a person’s soul. Peter is taken to another plane, where he confronts a serial killer about to claim his next victim. It’s a harrowing encounter that Peter only barely manages to survive.

Peter soon realizes that the shadow people are connected to the serial killer and that he is a member of the Order of Astrum, a group of evil psychics who murdered his parents years ago.  He must find the serial killer before he claims his next victim. To save many lives, Peter may have to tap into a legacy that he has always dreaded—and a power that may consume him.

Just when our economy desperately needs a new direction, Ronald Reagan’s most quoted living author—George Gilder—is back with an all-new paradigm-shifting theory of capitalism that will upturn conventional wisdom.

America’s struggling economy needs a better philosophy than the college student’s lament, “I can’t be out of money, I still have checks in my checkbook!” We’ve tried a government spending spree, and we’ve learned it doesn’t work. Now is the time to rededicate our country to the pursuit of free-market capitalism, before we’re buried under a mound of debt and unfunded entitlements. But how do we navigate between government spending that’s too big to sustain and financial institutions that are “too big to fail?” In Knowledge and Power, George Gilder proposes a bold new theory on how capitalism produces wealth and how our economy can regain its vitality and growth.

Gilder breaks away from the supply-side model of economics to present a new economic paradigm: the epic conflict between the knowledge of entrepreneurs on one side, the blunt power of government on the other. The knowledge of entrepreneurs and their freedom to share and use that knowledge are the sparks that light up the economy and set its gears in motion. The power of government to regulate, stifle, manipulate, subsidize, or suppress knowledge and ideas is the inertia that slows those gears down or keeps them from turning at all.

One of the twentieth century’s defining economic minds has returned with a new philosophy to carry us into the twenty-first. Knowledge and Power is a must-read for fiscal conservatives, business owners, CEOs, investors, and anyone interested in propelling America’s economy to future success.

From the author of the critically acclaimed bestseller, Scent of the Missing, comes a heartwarming and inspiring story that shows how dogs can be rescued and can rescue in return.

For her first book, Susannah Charleson was praised for her unique insight into the kinship between humans and dogs, as revealed through canine search and rescue. In The Possibility Dogs Charleson chronicles her journey into the world of psychiatric-service and therapy dogs trained to serve the human mind, a journey that began as a personal one. After a particularly grisly search led to a struggle with PTSD, Charleson credits healing to her partnership with search dog Puzzle. Inspired by that experience and having met dogs formally trained to assist in such crises, Charleson learns to identify abandoned dogs with service potential, often plucking them from shelters at the last minute, and how to train them for work beside hurting partners, to whom these second-chance dogs bring intelligence, comfort, and hope.

From black Lab puppy Merlin, once cast away in a garbage bag, who stabilizes his partner’s panic attacks to Ollie, the blind and deaf terrier who soothes anxious children, to Jake Piper, the starving pit bull mix who goes from abandoned to irreplaceable, The Possibility Dogs illuminates a whole new world of canine potential.

Alternating between nineteenth-century England and present-day New York, this is the story of renowned British painter J. M. W. Turner and his circle of patrons and lovers. It is also the story of Henry Leiden, a middle-aged family man with a troubled marriage and a dead-end job, who finds his life transformed by his discovery of Turner’s The Center of the World, a mesmerizing and unsettling painting of Helen of Troy that was thought to have been lost forever.

This painting has such devastating erotic power that it was kept hidden for almost two centuries, and was even said to have been destroyed—until Henry stumbles upon it in a secret compartment at his summer home in the Adirondacks. Though he knows it is an object of immense value, the thought of parting with it is unbearable: Henry is transfixed by its revelation of a whole other world, one of transcendent light, joy, and possibility.

Back in the nineteenth century, Turner struggles to create The Center of the World, his greatest painting but a painting unlike anything he (or anyone else) has ever attempted. We meet his patron, Lord Egremont, an aristocrat in whose palatial home Turner talks freely about his art and his beliefs. We also meet Elizabeth Spencer, Egremont’s mistress and Turner’s muse, the model for his Helen. Meanwhile, in the present, Henry is relentlessly trailed by an unscrupulous art dealer determined to get his hands on the painting at any cost. Filled with sex, beauty, and love (of all kinds), this richly textured novel explores the intersection between art and eroticism.

Several years have passed since we last saw Rachel Gold. The stunning and savvy attorney was then engaged to be married. Since that time she has become a mother and a much-grieving widow, and now she is embroiled in a lost cause—the Frankenstein case—representing a blue-collar neighborhood fighting a powerful developer intent on bulldozing their homes to erect a swanky gated community. Who’s pushing her here? Her mother, of course.

Rachel’s strategy will be based on a wild card: the judge on the case—a judge so wacky that he’s known to the Saint Louis bar as the Flinch Factor, as in the spawn of Judge Judy and Pee-wee Herman.

Rachel has also gained a new client: Susannah, sister of Nick Moran, heartthrob of every woman whose kitchen he remodeled. Nick has been murdered, found slumped on the front seat of his pickup along an isolated lane known to the vice squad as Gay Way, his pants unzipped, a coil of rubber tubing on the seat, an empty syringe on the floor. His female groupies are stunned, to say the least—Nick gay? No way. Susannah seeks out Rachel, convinced that her brother wasn’t gay or a druggie and that his death was not an accident.

Although Susannah seems the classic blindly adoring younger sister, a skeptical Rachel agrees to check it out. To her surprise, she turns up facts and witnesses suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Nick’s death was staged to look like an overdose during sex. Things then rapidly grow darker in what increasingly becomes a real Frankenstein of a case.

In 1973, on a remote beach on the Greek island of Samos, a movie star named Marilita Stephan murdered her boyfriend, his mother, and a powerful colonel in the military junta, a crime for which she was executed. Forty years later, Dinah Pelerin arrives on Samos to spend the summer with her Norwegian boyfriend Thor before she joins an archaeological dig nearby. Thor, a policeman on sabbatical, seems unduly fascinated by the 1973 murders, and Dinah soon discovers that he had more in mind than romance when he chose the island of Samos as their holiday destination.

Guns supplied to Greece’s former junta by the CIA have turned up in Norway in the hands of terrorists, and Norwegian intelligence has traced the source of the weapons to Samos. The island has also become a transit point for refugees fleeing the Middle East. When an Iraqi immigrant with a fake ID is killed, Thor suspects a link to the arms traffickers. But before he can investigate, his car plunges off a cliff and he disappears. Because Greece’s economic woes have bred corruption, Dinah fears that he was betrayed by local police and was either kidnapped or murdered.

Unable to trust anyone, she sets out alone to find him. The deeper she digs, the more connections she sees between the present crime wave and what happened in 1973. It’s possible that Marilita may have been innocent, and the fate of her boyfriend holds eerie parallels to Thor’s disappearance. Dinah must be smarter and braver than she has ever been if she is to prevent another Greek tragedy.

Set on Cape Cod during one tumultuous summer, Elizabeth Kelly’s gothic family story will delight readers of The Family Fang and The Giant’s House.

The Last Summer of the Camperdowns, from the bestselling author of Apologize, Apologize!, introduces Riddle James Camperdown, the twelve-year-old daughter of the idealistic Camp and his manicured, razor-sharp wife, Greer. It’s 1972, and Riddle’s father is running for office from the family compound in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Between Camp’s desire to toughen her up and Greer’s demand for glamour, Riddle has her hands full juggling her eccentric parents. When she accidentally witnesses a crime close to home, her confusion and fear keep her silent. As the summer unfolds, the consequences of her silence multiply. Another mysterious and powerful family, the Devlins, slowly emerges as the keeper of astonishing secrets that could shatter the Camperdowns. As an old love triangle, bitter war wounds, and the struggle for status spiral out of control, Riddle can only watch, hoping for the courage to reveal the truth.