Catherine Raynes: Ransom and The Social Circle

Ransom by Daniel Silva   Alice Winter, one of Britain’s most dazzling socialites, seemingly has the perfect life—a lavish home in posh Knightsbridge, a grand estate in Devon, millions of followers on social media who eagerly await her next post. But when she disappears without a trace while on holiday with three old friends from Cambridge, her desperate husband, the real estate baron Edward Knight, turns to none other than Gabriel Allon to find her.  He soon discovers that Alice Winter is not the woman she appears to be, that she has a reckless side, that she has secrets. But Edward Knight has a secret too, a secret so dangerous that Gabriel will have no choice but to return to the life he thought he had left behind. An old enemy lurks there, waiting for him to make one misstep, waiting for the perfect moment to exact vengeance.     The Social Circle by Sophie Wan   When Maggie Tang arrives as a transfer student at UC Berkeley in 2005, she has no idea how her life is about to change. In the hallway of her dingy apartment building, she meets Adam, Charles, Hari, and Priya, the friends with whom she’ll create Circle, the world’s first major social media platform. But navigating her creative ambitions alongside love and friendship isn’t so simple, and when they inevitably collide, Maggie exits Circle in dramatic fashion.  A decade later, Maggie is struggling with a new venture when she receives an invitation to celebrate Circle’s tenth anniversary on a private European island, everyone back together again. While she’s still bitter about how things ended, her company desperately needs the publicity, and deep down, Maggie can’t resist the handwritten plea at the bottom—Come, please.  Between boat rides and beach days, bit by bit the reunion begins to feel like old times. But the journalist writing a retrospective on Circle is eager for a scoop, which means they can’t tiptoe around the past forever. And when a new truth is revealed about their fallout all those years ago, Maggie will have to decide whether to run again or fight for this second chance with the people she once loved most.    LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.