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When an explosion in London kills two policemen and seriously injures three more, many believe that anarchists are the culprits. But Thomas Pitt, commander of Special Branch, knows the city�s radical groups well enough to suspect otherwise: that someone with decidedly more personal motives lit the deadly fuse. As he investigates the source of the fatal blast, he�s stunned to discover the bombing was a calculated strike against the ranks of law enforcement.

Bright lights. Big city. Brutal murder. Chicago, 1938. Late one night before the ten o'clock show, the body of a prominent radio actress is found dead in the station's lounge. All the evidence points to murder.and one young, up-and-coming radio actress, Vivian Witchell, as the next victim. But Viv isn't the type to leave her fate in the hands of others-she's used to stealing the show. Alongside charming private detective Charlie Haverman, Vivian is thrust into a world of clues and motives, suspects and secrets.

On a moonless night in the spring of 1851, a young slave makes a bid for freedom with only the North Star to guide him. Jonah Williams, on his eighteenth birthday, flees the South Carolina plantation on which he was born with only a few stolen coins, a knife, and the clothes on his back. No shoes, no map, no clear idea of where to head, except north, hiding during the day and running through the night.

With fighting erupting around his Kansas farm, 16-year-old Jefferson Davis Bussey can hardly wait to join the Union forces. He wants to defend his family from the dreaded Colonel Watie and his Cherokee Indian rebels. After enlisting, Jeff discovers the life of a soldier brings little glory and honor. During battle, his friends die around him. And when he infiltrates Watie's camp as a spy, he discovers the enemy is much like himself-only fighting for a different cause.

Trying to escape the shambles her con-man father has made of their reputation, Lucinda Curtis arrives in West Point, New York, determined to land a husband from the military academy. Campbell Conklin is first in his class and preparing to embark upon a storied career in the U.S. Army. Lucinda thinks Campbell will make the perfect husband . . . as long as he does not find out about her father. Seth Westcott also has taken a liking to Lucinda. He's kind, smart . . . and working extremely hard to graduate last. Tradition states that the worst cadets are assigned to the cavalry out west.

London, 1887. As the city prepares to celebrate Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, Veronica Speedwell is marking a milestone of her own. After burying her spinster aunt, the orphaned Veronica is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry-and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as she is fending off admirers, Veronica wields her butterfly net and a sharpened hatpin with equal aplomb, and with her last connection to England now gone, she intends to embark upon the journey of a lifetime.

Increasingly wary of her father's genetic research, Rachel Kramer has determined that this trip with him to Germany-in the summer of 1939-will be her last. But a cryptic letter from her estranged friend, begging Rachel for help, changes everything. Married to SS officer Gerhardt Schlick, Kristine sees the dark tides turning and fears her husband views their daughter, Amelie, deaf since birth, as a blight on his Aryan bloodline. Once courted by Schlick, Rachel knows he's as dangerous as the swastikas that hang like ebony spiders from every government building in Berlin.

"I hate Samurais, I hate Samurais,' I muttered to myself as I made my way back to the little temple. The words made a chant that I could not keep in step with. 'I hate Samurais.I hate Samurais,' I kept singing until I was home. Suddenly I realized that I was whole, that I hadn't lost my head, that Saru was still Saru ."-from The Boy and the Samurai With feudal wars raging through the Japanese countryside, it is no place for children, particularly homeless orphans like six-year-old Saru, who grow up fast and hard in the cold city.

In 1892, New Fiddleham, New England, things are never quite what they seem, especially when Abigail Rook and her eccentric employer, R. F. Jackaby, are called upon to investigate the supernatural. First, a vicious species of shape-shifters disguise themselves as a litter of kittens, and a day later, their owner is found murdered with a single mysterious puncture wound.

Colorado, 1880. Gracy Brookens has delivered hundreds, maybe thousands, of babies in her lifetime. The only midwife in a small mining town tucked in the Tenmile Range, Gracy is a gifted and important resource for the women of her hardscrabble community. For years, she has advised expectant mothers through their pregnancies, guided them through the tortures of labor, and then helped them heal. To Gracy, every baby who survived its birth in the Colorado mountains was a miracle, though of course not all of them did, nor did the mothers.