lionfish

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Nils Shapiro accepts what appears to be an easy, lucrative job: find out if Beverly Mayer’s grandson is foolishly throwing away his trust fund in Hollywood, especially now, in the wake of his fiancée’s tragic death. However, that easy job becomes much more complicated once Nils arrives in Los Angeles, a disorienting place where the sunshine hides dark secrets. Nils quickly suspects that Ebben Mayer’s fiancée was murdered and that Ebben himself may have been the target.

When Aurelie Harcourt's father dies in debtor's prison, he leaves her just two things: his wealthy family, whom she has never met, and his famous pen name, Nathaniel Droll. Her new family greets her with apathy and even resentment. Only the quiet houseguest, Silas Rotherham, welcomes her company. When Aurelie decides to complete her father's unfinished serial novel, she must keep her identity as Nathaniel Droll hidden while searching for the truth about her mother's disappearance - and perhaps even her father's death.

It was a summer of love and a summer of secrets. She has built a good life: a husband who adores her, a daughter she is fiercely proud of, a home with warmth and love at its heart. But things were not always so good, and the truth is that she has done things she can never admit.

When high school English teacher Alice Thornton helps her dying Russian neighbor write a spy thriller, she thinks she’s just doing a good deed. But when a sexy mystery man shows up in her classroom, claiming to be the novel’s dashing antihero, Alice is swept into a lethal conspiracy. Enigmatic former CIA operative Carter Beck warns her that the sensational murder plot wasn’t fiction. And because she knows too much, the killer wants her silenced—making Carter her only hope of survival.