In this gripping suspense novel from the bestselling author of the Sanctus trilogy, lead forensic expert Laughton Rees is back, this time investigating a series of missing women in a small town near the Forest of Dean--where she uncovers a dark and sinister plot, decades in the making. Adele Friar knows better than most that something dangerous lurks in the forest. So when her sister Maddie goes missing, she fears that the woods may hold the answers. After all, Maddie isn't the only one who has disappeared recently. Locals put the unusually high number of missing persons in the area down to inexperienced hikers getting lost in the forest's depths, or girls abandoning their sleepy rural town for the excitement of city life. Some even blame the Cinderman, a legend who haunts the woods looking for unsuspecting victims. Forensic specialist Laughton Rees doesn't believe in legends, she believes in facts. With help from Adele and DCI Tannahill Khan back in London, she is determined to find Maddie and dispel the dangerous ghost stories once and for all. But something strange is going on in the forest--the police seem reluctant to investigate the disappearances, and the locals aren't talking. What if the monster in the woods isn't a myth after all, and a cold-blooded killer is stalking his victims from the shadowy safety of the trees? As Laughton and Adele question everyone, from the gruff leader of an off-grid commune to the mysterious Earl who presides over the crumbling abbey in the heart of the forest, they slowly begin to unravel the legend of the Cinderman--and discover the truth is far uglier, and far more dangerous, than any mythical monster.

Forensics expert Laughton Rees hunts an unusually clever killer who appears to be staging murder scenes just for her in this twisty new psychological thriller by the bestselling author of the Sanctus trilogy. How do you catch a killer if the victim doesn’t exist ? A glamorous woman is murdered in her ultra-luxurious London mansion and her husband goes missing. But according to public records, neither of them exists. The only leads police have are several objects arranged around the woman’s body, including a set of keys and a book called   How to Process a Murder  by Laughton Rees—a book that appears to have helped the killer forensically cleanse the crime scene. Laughton Rees is an academic who doesn’t usually work live cases after the brutal murder of her mother as a teen left her traumatized and emotionally scarred. But the presence of her book at this scene draws her unwillingly into the high-profile investigation and media circus that springs up around it. As the dark objects found beside the body lead her closer to the victim’s identity, a dangerous threat to Laughton and her daughter emerges, as well as painful memories of her past related to the man she has always blamed for her mother’s John Rees, Laughton’s father, the current Metropolitan Chief Commissioner and a man she has not spoken to in twenty years. Laughton’s family was destroyed once and she built herself a new one. Now, she has to face her darkest fears and help catch a killer before this one is destroyed too.

A Today Show #ReadwithJenna Book Club Pick A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help us start anew. It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamt of coming for years―she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she's here without him. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe―which makes it that much more surprising when the women can’t stop confiding in each other. In turns uproariously, absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach's The Wedding People is a look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined―and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

A Today Show #ReadwithJenna Book Club Pick A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help us start anew. It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamt of coming for years―she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she's here without him. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe―which makes it that much more surprising when the women can’t stop confiding in each other. In turns uproariously, absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach's The Wedding People is a look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined―and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

A panoramic history of Puerto Rico from pre-Columbian times to todayPuerto Rico is a Spanish-speaking territory of the United States with a history shaped by conquest and resistance. For centuries, Puerto Ricans have crafted and negotiated complex ideas about nationhood. Jorell Meléndez-Badillo provides a new history of Puerto Rico that gives voice to the archipelago’s people while offering a lens through which to understand the political, economic, and social challenges confronting them today.In this masterful work of scholarship, Meléndez-Badillo sheds light on the vibrant cultures of the archipelago in the centuries before the arrival of Columbus and captures the full sweep of Puerto Rico’s turbulent history in the centuries that followed, from the first indigenous insurrection against colonial rule in 1511—led by the powerful chieftain Agüeybaná II—to the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1952. He deftly portrays the contemporary period and the intertwined though unequal histories of the archipelago and the continental United States.Puerto Rico is an engaging, sometimes personal, and consistently surprising history of colonialism, revolt, and the creation of a national identity, offering new perspectives not only on Puerto Rico and the Caribbean but on the United States and the Atlantic world more broadly.Available in Spanish from our partners at Grupo Planeta

Esmeralda Santiago's story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her childhood was full of both tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds and sights as well as poverty. Growing up, she learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. As she enters school we see the clash, both hilarious and fierce, of Puerto Rican and Yankee culture. When her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually take on a new identity. In this first volume of her much-praised, bestselling trilogy, Santiago brilliantly recreates the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years and her tremendous journey from the barrio to Brooklyn, from translating for her mother at the welfare office to high honors at Harvard.

Combining the haunting power of Toni Morrison’s Beloved with the evocative atmosphere of Phillippa Gregory’s A Respectable Trade, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s groundbreaking novel illuminates a little discussed aspect of history—the Puerto Rican Atlantic Slave Trade—witnessed through the experiences of Pola, an African captive used as a breeder to bear more slaves. A Woman of Endurance, set in nineteenth-century Puerto Rican plantation society, follows Pola, a deeply spiritual African woman who is captured and later sold for the purpose of breeding future slaves. The resulting babies are taken from her as soon as they are born. Pola loses the faith that has guided her and becomes embittered and defensive. The dehumanizing violence of her life almost destroys her. But this is not a novel of defeat but rather one of survival, regeneration, and reclamation of common humanity. Readers are invited to join Pola in her journey to healing. From the sadistic barbarity of her first experiences, she moves on to receive compassion and support from a revitalizing new community. Along the way, she learns to recognize and embrace the many faces of love—a mother’s love, a daughter’s love, a sister’s love, a love of community, and the self-love that she must recover before she can offer herself to another. It is ultimately, a novel of the triumph of the human spirit even under the most brutal of conditions.

Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation. Palestine is a microcosm of the on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial. Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation. How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple dignity for the Palestinian.