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Robbie Steinhardt lives a peaceful life. A fixture of his small alpine village, he tends cattle, minds his own business, and doesn’t dwell on his former life and the family and lover he left behind --- back when he was Mac Dekker, CIA. But when he learns his son, Will, died following in his footsteps, he needs answers. What mission took Will up into the alpine heights, and why is Ilya Ivashka on the same trail? Ilya --- his close friend, his rival in love. Ilya, who framed Mac for treason and sent him into hiding. Wiping away the years, Mac returns to the field to find the secrets Will hid and finds himself facing the Herculean task of stopping a terrorist plot that threatens thousands. But in a field of double agents, who can he trust?

Paris, 1885: Aubry Tourvel, a spoiled and stubborn nine-year-old girl, comes across a wooden puzzle ball on her walk home from school. She tosses it over the fence, only to find it in her backpack that evening. Days later, at the family dinner table, she starts to bleed to death. When medical treatment only makes her worse, she flees to the outskirts of the city, where she realizes that it is this very act of movement that keeps her alive. So begins her lifelong journey on the run from her condition, which won’t allow her to stay anywhere for longer than a few days or return to a place where she’s already been. But the longer Aubry wanders and the more desperate she is to share her life with others, the clearer it becomes that the world she travels through may not be quite the same as everyone else’s.

A VIEW FROM THE STARS features a range of short works from the past three decades of New York Times bestselling author Cixin Liu's prolific career, putting his nonfiction essays and short stories side-by-side for the first time. This collection includes essays and interviews that shed light on Liu's experiences as a reader, writer and lover of science fiction throughout his life, as well as short fiction that gives glimpses into the evolution of his imaginative voice over the years.

Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they attempt to hide their identities from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives. Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears. Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress and is desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own.

Los Angeles, August 1965. Anger and pent-up frustrations boil over in the Watts neighborhood after a traffic stop of two Black motorists. As the Watts riots explode, crime photographer Harry Ingram snaps photos at the scene. When he captures the image of an unarmed activist being shot down by the cops, he winds up in the hospital, beaten, his camera missing. Proof of the unjust killing seems lost --- until Ingram’s girlfriend, Anita Claire, retrieves the hidden film in a daring rescue. A recuperating Ingram is approached by Betty Payton, a comrade of Anita’s mother, who wants Ingram’s help tracking down her business associate, Moses “Mose” Tolbert, who was last seen during the riots. Ingram follows the investigation down a rabbit hole of burglary rings, bank robberies, looted cash and clandestine agendas.

Frankie McKenzie dies in a freak kebab-related accident after what she sees as yet another dud of a first date. But life isn’t over for Frankie. Instead, she is miraculously offered a second chance: Frankie can revisit key moments from her past to see if different choices will lead her to the fulfilling life she’s always dreamt of. Should she decide to languidly lounge by warm Mexican waters with sexy Raphael? Or say yes to the proposal of earnestly reliable university-sweetheart Toby? Perhaps a worry-free gilded cage with Callum is the solution! Or what about that high-powered media career she thought she wanted? Soon, Frankie will see what her life would have been if only she’d caught that one-way flight, accepted the marriage proposal, or attended the intimidating job interview.

"How ought one to live?" This is the question that obsesses London-based publisher Ayush, driving him to question every act of consumption. He embarks on a radical experiment in his own life and the lives of those connected to him --- his practical economist husband; their twins; and even the authors he edits and publishes. One of those authors, a mysterious M. N. Opie, writes a story about a young academic involved in a car accident that causes her life to veer in an unexpected direction. Another author, an economist, describes how the gift of a cow to an impoverished family on the West Bengal–Bangladesh border sets them on a startling path to tragedy. Together, these connected narratives raise the question: How free are we really to make our own choices?

Danny Ryan --- former dock worker, Irish mob soldier and fugitive from the law --- is now a Las Vegas casino mogul and billionaire silent partner in a group that owns two lavish hotels. Finally, Danny has it all: a beautiful house, a child he adores, and a woman he might even fall in love with. But when Danny tries to convert an old hotel into his dream resort, he triggers a war against Las Vegas power brokers, a powerful FBI agent bent on revenge, and a rival casino owner with dark connections of his own. To save his life and everything he loves, Danny must become the ruthless fighter he once was --- and never wanted to be again. Following CITY ON FIRE and CITY OF DREAMS, CITY IN RUINS is the explosive conclusion to Don Winslow’s genre-defining crime trilogy and the final book of his extraordinary career.

John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland --- Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted. Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff and is found, unconscious and badly injured, by Ivar, who takes him home and tends to his wounds. The two men do not speak a common language, but as John builds a dictionary of Ivar’s world, they learn to communicate. And as Ivar sees himself for the first time in decades reflected through the eyes of another person, they build a fragile, unusual connection.

The end is nigh. It has been nearly 200 years since Hadrian Marlowe assaulted the person of the Emperor and walked away from war. From his Empire. His duty. From the will and service of the eldritch being known only as the Quiet. The galaxy lies in the grip of a terrible plague, and worse, the Cielcin have overrun the realms of men. A messenger has come to Jadd, bearing a summons from the Sollan Emperor for the one-time hero. A summons, a pardon and a plea. HAPSIS, the Emperor’s secret first-contact intelligence organization, has located one of the dreadful Watchers, the immense, powerful beings worshipped by the Pale Cielcin. Called out of retirement and exile, the old hero --- accompanied by his daughter, Cassandra --- must race across the galaxy and against time to accomplish one last, impossible task: To kill a god.

When Kate Summerlin was 11 years old, she climbed out her bedroom window looking for a taste of freedom. But what she found as she wandered in the woods near her house was something else: the body of a beautiful young woman, the first of Merkury’s victims. And before she could come to grips with what she was seeing, she heard a voice behind her --- the killer’s voice --- saying: “Don’t turn around.” Now, Kate is a successful true crime writer, but she has never told anyone the truth about what happened on that long-ago night. When Merkury claims yet another victim, a college student, Kate finds herself drawn back to the town where everything started. She sets out to make sense of this latest crime, but the deeper she gets into the story, the more she comes to realize that it’s far from over.

Vega Gopalan is adrift. Still reeling from the death of her sister years earlier, she leaves South India to attend graduate school at Columbia University. In New York, Vega straddles many different worlds, eventually moving in and out of a series of relationships that take her through the striving world of academia, the intellectual isolation of the immigrant suburbs, and, ultimately, the loneliness of single motherhood. But it is the birth of Vega’s daughter that forces the novel’s central question: What does it mean to make a home?

Set in a not-too-distant America, I CHEERFULLY REFUSE is the tale of a bereaved and pursued musician embarking under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved bookselling wife. Rainy, an endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs and remote islands of the inland sea. Encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, crumbled infrastructure and a lawless society. As his innate guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his strengthening wake.

If any man can do the impossible, it’s Richard Sharpe. And the impossible is exactly what the formidable Captain Sharpe is asked to do when he’s sent on an undercover mission to a small village in the Spanish countryside, far behind enemy lines. For the quiet, remote village, sitting high above the Almaraz bridge, is about to become the center of a battle for the future of Europe. Two French armies march towards the bridge, one from the North and one from the South. If they meet, the British are lost. Only Sharpe's small group of men --- with their cunning and courage to rely on --- stand in their way. But they're rapidly outnumbered, enemies are hiding in plain sight, and as the French edge ever closer to the frontline, time is running out.

Meghan Michaels is trying to find balance between being a single mom and working full time as an ICU nurse when a patient named Caitlin arrives in her ward with a traumatic brain injury. They say she jumped from a bridge and plunged over 20 feet to the train tracks below. When a witness comes forward with new details about Caitlin’s fall, it calls everything they know into question. Was Caitlin actually pushed? And if so, by whom and why? Meghan lets herself get close to Caitlin until she’s deeply entangled in Caitlin’s and her family’s lives. Only when it’s too late does she realize that she and her daughter could be the next victims.

In TABLE FOR TWO, Amor Towles shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood. The New York stories, most of which take place around the year 2000, consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages. In Towles’ novel, RULES OF CIVILITY, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September 1938 with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself --- and others --- in a noirish tale that takes us through the movie sets, bungalows and dive bars of Los Angeles.

Celebrated writer Alma Cruz doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories --- literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma's characters.

When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem --- she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they’ve been together for years. As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a light bulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a light bulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actually living?

After 23 years of building careers and raising kids together, Jason and Nicole Elswick are ready for a break from their daily lives. Jason has spent years planning his dream sabbatical --- ditching work for a nine-month-long motorcycle trip through South America. But that’s Jason’s dream, not Nicole’s. After years working retail and parenting in Portland, Nicole craves the sun of the Southwest and the artistic community in Santa Fe, where she wants to learn jewelry design. A chance encounter at a dinner party presents a surprising --- and intriguing --- way out of their dilemma. Over a little too much wine, Jason and Nicole’s married neighbors sing the praises of the 500 Mile Rule: their policy of enjoying themselves however they wish --- and with whomever they wish --- when they’re temporarily far apart.

London, 1924. When shy academic Lao She meets larger-than-life Judge Dee Ren Jie, his quiet life abruptly turns from books and lectures to daring chases and narrow escapes. Dee has come to London to investigate the murder of a man he’d known during World War I when serving with the Chinese Labour Corps. No sooner has Dee interviewed the grieving widow than another dead body turns up. Then another. All stabbed to death with a butterfly sword. Will Dee and Lao be able to connect the threads of the murders --- or are they next in line as victims?

Deep in the Florida Everglades, the body of a woman is discovered in pieces, presumably ravaged by an alligator. Upon closer inspection, it’s determined no animal could make such perfectly precise cuts. Only a blade could do that. Soon, dozens of oil drums emerge amid the river of grass, each one packed to the brim with body parts. FDLE special agent Amy Larson and her partner, FBI special agent Hunter Forrest, have seen this kind of sadistic killing before. And when a small beige horse is discovered at the bottom of one of the barrels, they know exactly what it means. The fourth horseman of the apocalypse rides a pale horse --- and his name is Death. With so many bodies to identify, connecting one victim to the next is easier said than done.

Sara Marsala barely knows who she is anymore after the failure of her business and marriage. On top of that, her beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away. But this opens an escape from her life and a window into the past by way of a plane ticket to Sicily, a deed to a possibly valuable plot of land and a bombshell family secret. Rosie believes that Sara’s great-grandmother Serafina, the family matriarch who was left behind while her husband worked in America, didn’t die of illness as family lore has it. She was murdered. Thus begins a twist-filled adventure that takes Sara all over the picturesque Italian countryside as she races to solve a mystery and learn the story of Serafina. As she discovers more about Serafina, she also realizes she is coming head-to-head with the same menacing forces that took down her great-grandmother.

In 2011, Eunju Oh opens her door to greet a stranger: a young Korean American woman holding a familiar-looking knife --- a knife Eunju hasn’t seen in 30 years. In South Korea in the 1980s, young Eunju and her mother are homeless on the street. After being captured by the police, they’re sent to live within the walls of a state-sanctioned reformatory center that claims to rehabilitate the nation’s citizens but hides a darker, more violent reality. While Eunju and her mother form a tight-knit community with the other women in the kitchen, two teenage brothers, Sangchul and Youngchul, are compelled to labor in the workshops and make increasingly desperate decisions --- and all are forced down a path of survival, the repercussions of which will echo for decades to come.

For weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, Yorick spots his own name among the list of those lost at sea. As an apprentice librarian for the White Star Line, his job was to curate the ship’s second-class library. But the day the Titanic set sail, he was left stranded at the dock. After the ship’s sinking, Yorick takes this twist of fate as a sign to follow his lifelong dream of owning a bookshop in Paris. Soon after, he receives an invitation to a secret society of survivors where he encounters other ticket holders who didn’t board the ship. Haunted by their good fortune, they decide to form a book society, where they can grapple with their own anxieties. But with the Great War on the horizon and the unexpected death of one of their own, the surviving book club members are left wondering what fate might have in store.

Professor William Dresden has found solitude in the south of France to grapple with his troubled past --- a neglected upbringing, failed romances, the recent demolition of his life’s work in academia, and even witnessing genocide. But he soon learns that he has much larger problems when an adrift MI6 officer, Adeline Parker, insists on a meeting, revealing shocking information about his family. Then a bomb explodes. William and Adeline narrowly escape the attempt on their lives and find themselves battling a group of neofascists and extreme nationalists who are inciting violent divisions across Europe. They are pulled into a shadowy war against a cabal called the Strasbourg Executive and pushed to the brink by family betrayals, corrupt institutions and the Executive’s subversive plots against the fabric of Western society.