This book looks closely at how people behave in major disasters, arguing against the idea that chaos and panic are the default. Using historical episodes and reporting, it shows recurring patterns of spontaneous cooperation, improvisation, and mutual aid that form temporary communities in the wake of catastrophe.

Set on an 18th-century Jamaican sugar plantation, the novel follows Lilith, a young woman born into slavery, as she navigates the violent limits imposed on her body and choices.

A pragmatic private investigator in India is drawn into a case when a household servant disappears; the investigation unfolds through interviews, local social detail, and procedural clue-gathering.

Set in mid-20th-century England, the story focuses on a physician who becomes entwined with a once-grand house and its family as strange occurrences and social decline intensify. The pressure comes from the intersection of a medical, rational viewpoint with uncanny events tied to a deteriorating domestic world.

Sarah Crowe moves from Atlanta to an old rural Rhode Island house and finds an unfinished manuscript left by a former tenant — a parapsychologist fixated on an ancient oak on the property.

A CIA agent who works for a clandestine black-ops unit must navigate secrecy, betrayal, and professional danger as events force him to confront the consequences of undercover work.

A house in England exerts an active, hostile presence while a young twin, Miranda, contends with family loss and an ambiguous relationship to the dwelling. The novel combines ghostly and vampire-inflected elements to stage domestic dread and inheritance as intimate, supernatural pressure.

Set in early sixteenth-century England, the novel follows the rise of a skilled lawyer and fixer inside the royal court, concentrating on his practical work, alliances, and the political currents that elevate him.