"A frustrated academic still reeling from her husband's betrayal moves into Ashton Hall with her young son and tries to come up with answers after they discover the remains of a woman walled into a forgotten part of the manor"--

When four members of a wealthy household are killed in their suburban Chicago mansion, shock reverberates around the quiet community. The only witness is a small child, and with the obvious culprit soon behind bars, it seems like an open-and-shut case. Enter Cameron Winter. Winter -- a spy turned English professor -- has a unique knack for solving complicated crimes. Despite the lead detective blocking his involvement, Winter discovers this seemingly safe suburban paradise is concealing something dark, something that people want to keep hidden -- and he will do anything to bring the truth to light.

Paris, 1900. Comte de Landois has ordered his wife Marguerite to travel from Paris, to join him in the Loire Valley. Her journey into the pastoral quiet is shattered by the appearance of a dead man on the railway tracks. Who is he? And why does Marguerite's young traveling companion pale when she sees him? When the Comte presents Marguerite with an adopted baby, and his sudden friendship with local clerics imposes new rules and regulations on her behavior, things start to take a sinister and troubling turn. The sister of her young companion goes missing and Marguerite calls in Chief Inspector Durand to help hunt her down. Together, they begin to unravel a tangled world of small-town secrets, disturbing obsessions and unholy loves.

"A writer's notebook becomes the key that unlocks memories of a love formed and lost in 1960s Paris. In the aftermath of Algeria's war of independence, Paris was a city rife with suspicion and barely suppressed violence. Amid this tension, Jean, a young writer adrift, met and fell for Dannie, an enigmatic woman fleeing a troubled past. A half century later, with his old black notebook as a guide, he retraces this fateful period in his life, recounting how, through Dannie, he became mixed up with a group of unsavory characters connected by a shadowy crime. Soon Jean, too, was a person of interest to the detective pursuing their case--a detective who would prove instrumental in revealing Dannie's darkest secret. The Black Notebook bears all the hallmarks of this Nobel Prize-winning literary master's unsettling and intensely atmospheric style, rendered in English by acclaimed translator Mark Polizzotti. Once again, Modiano invites us into his unique world, a Paris infused with melancholy, uncertain danger, and the fading echoes of lost love"--