In a museum far from home a man stumbles onto a painting of a woman for whom he once, long ago, risked everything and who then mysteriously disappeared from his life. As a young lawyer, the nameless protagonist of The Woman on the Stairs became entangled in the affairs of three people mired in a complex and destructive relationship. An artist, the woman whose portrait he had painted, and her husband became a triangle that drew the lawyer deeper and deeper into their tangled web. Now, encountering the painting that triggered it all, the lawyer must reconcile his past and present selves; when he eventually locates the woman, he is forced to confront the truth of his love and the reality that his life has been irrevocably changed. With The Woman on the Stairs, the internationally acclaimed author of The Reader delivers a powerful new novel about obsession, creativity, and love. Intricately crafted, poignant, and beguiling, this is Bernhard Schlink writing at his peak.

Jane Logan is a stranger to Berlin and she finds the city alive and echoing with the ghosts of its turbulent past. At six months pregnant, she's instructed by her partner Petra to rest and enjoy her new life in Germany. But while Petra is out at work, Jane begins to feel uneasy in their chic apartment. Screams reverberate through the walls, lights flicker in the derelict building that looms over the yard, a shadow passes on the stairs . . . Jane meets a neighbour's daughter, a girl whose life she tries to mend, but her involvement only further isolates her. Alone and haunted, Jane fears the worst . . . but the worst is yet to come. Louise Welsh, the acclaimed author of The Cutting Room, delivers another masterful suspense novel. The Girl on the Stairs is a powerful psychological thriller packed with twists and turns to keep you reading well into the night. Read it, or be left in the dark.

On November 22, 1963, a young Victoria Elizabeth Adams stood behind a fourth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. She watched as John Kennedy was murdered in the streets below. Then, with a co-worker in tow, she ran down the back stairs of the building in order to get outside and determine what had happened. At that precise moment, her life changed forever. Her actions posed serious problems for the Warren Commission, already grappling with its agenda of naming Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin. If Miss Adams was telling the truth, then she had descended those stairs at the same time Oswald would have been on them as he made his escape from the sixth floor sniper's nest. Yet Miss Adams saw no one. And even though the stairs were old, wooden, and creaky under any weight, she heard no one either. When Miss Adams was called to testify before a Commission attorney, she was quickly discredited, humiliated, and eventually branded a liar. Behind closed doors she pleaded with the government to conduct time tests of her actions if she was felt to have been inaccurate. She begged the government to question her co-workers, particularly the woman who had accompanied her down the stairs, if she was not believed. Instead, she was ignored. And so, knowing the truth of what she had done and now fearing for her life because of it, she went into hiding and became willing to die with that secret knowledge. Intrigued by what little was available about Miss Adams, the author went in search of her. It took him 35 years to eventually find this elusive witness. As his journey progressed, many questions arose about the assassination while others were put to rest. And in the end, the truth of what Miss Adams did was finally discovered. This is an important story, unique in this mess that continues to surround Kennedy's death. It is a story that has been buried for decades. It is an account the government did not want you to hear, and actually fabricated evidence in order to keep you from hearing it. Now, the truth can be told.

During World War II and the last days of British occupation in India, fifteen-year-old Vidya dreams of attending college. But when her forward-thinking father is beaten senseless by the British police, she is forced to live with her grandfather’s large traditional family, where the women live apart from the men and are meant to be married off as soon as possible. Vidya’s only refuge becomes her grandfather’s upstairs library, which is forbidden to women. There she meets Raman, a young man also living in the house who relishes her intellectual curiosity. But when Vidya’s brother makes a choice the family cannot condone, and when Raman seems to want more than friendship, Vidkya must question all she has believed in. Padma Venkatraman’s debut novel poignantly shows a girl struggling to find her place in a mixedup world. Climbing the Stairs is a powerful story about love and loss set against a fascinating historical backdrop. Read Padma Venkatraman's posts on the Penguin Blog.

In this spine-tingling, atmospheric “nail-biter of a novel” (Shelf Awareness), a woman returns to her hometown after her childhood friend attempts suicide at an alleged haunted house—the same place where a traumatic incident shattered their lives twenty years ago. Few in sleepy Sumner’s Mills have stumbled across the Octagon House hidden deep in the woods. Even fewer are brave enough to trespass. A man had killed his wife and two young daughters there, a shocking, gruesome crime that the sleepy upstate New York town tried to bury. One summer night, an emboldened fourteen-year-old Clare and her best friend, Abby, ventured into the Octagon House. Clare came out, but a piece of Abby never did. Twenty years later, Clare receives word that Abby has attempted suicide at the Octagon House and now lies in a coma. With little to lose, Clare returns to her roots to uncover the darkness responsible for ruining their lives. A “spellbinding horror story, where the terror comes not from ghosts, but from the haunted places we find within ourselves” (Elizabeth Brundage, author of The Vanishing Point), Beneath the Stairs is perfect for fans of Jennifer McMahon, Simone St. James, and Chris Bohjalian.

Thirteen-year-old Jon and his eleven-year-old sister, Tania, are typical kids—except Tania can communicate with ghosts. Their parents also happen to be the producers of a ghost-hunter television show—and have no idea one of their own kids can see ghosts. In The Ghost on the Stairs, the brother-sister duo join forces to help reunite a newlywed couple from beyond the grave. In The Riverboat Phantom, Jon and Tania try to help the ghost of a steamboat worker find peace at last—and find more than they bargained for on the river!

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From “one of the most acute and lasting writers of her generation” (The New York Times) comes a piercing novel of race, class, love, and war in America. Twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the daughter of a gentleman farmer, has come to a university town as a student. When she takes a job as a part-time nanny for a mysterious and glamorous family, she finds herself drawn deeper into their world and forever changed. “An indelible portrait of a young woman coming of age in the Midwest in the year after 9/11…. Moore has written her most powerful book yet.” —The New York Times