trio orbit

"Hal Knight is a famous, if deeply polarizing, figure in Hollywood and on Capitol Hill. After a disastrous #MeToo encounter, Knight resigns from his seat, quits social media, and disappears to a Caribbean island. Upon his arrival, however, he is approached by a group of mysterious strangers, whom he discovers are CIA agents hoping to penetrate Bolrovia-a hostile, eastern European country. They want his help in doing so. Bolrovia's oligarch, Nikolai Horvatz, is a fan of Knight's movies, and the agents anticipate Knight will receive an invitation for an official visit imminently. Though Knight is skeptical about the mission, he realizes he has nothing more to lose and could-at last-do something truly meaningful with his life, whether or not anybody ever learns the truth about his hand in the matter. Reluctantly, he agrees to the job. Arriving in Bolrovia as President Horvatz's guest of honor, Knight is faced with his ultimate acting challenge. He brushes shoulders with Horvatz, Branko Sariéc-the President's ruthless head of state security-shadowy figures in their orbit, and another group of Americans whose motivations are unclear. The only people in his corner are a trio of agents led by Lauren Witt, who has her own troubles in the agency and despises Knight. What begins as an assignment to keep his eyes and ears open quickly turns into a life or death mission"--

January 2028 brings the highly anticipated seventh-grade winter ski trip to a snow-blanketed lodge in Mátraháza. The journey begins with classic bus antics and Tommie immediately falling sideways into a sixty-centimeter snowbank upon arrival. Under the expert instruction of a grizzled guide named János, Tommie quickly masters the slopes, but the real storm brewing is completely emotional. After a tearful phone call home, an over-emotional Tommie asks to read a single page of Lola's private diary . Lola carelessly agrees, unleashing a devastating fallout when Tommie reads a raw, honest entry out loud: Lola has written that Rae is 'emotionally deaf' and structurally exhausting to be friends with. Deeply wounded, Rae freezes her text alerts, packs her toiletries, and moves out of Room Seven to sleep in an isolated single room for the rest of the weekend . As a heavy, agonizing silence paralyzes the remaining trio, Lola must navigate her guilt and learn how to communicate raw feelings to a friend's face rather than a notebook page. Guided by a supportive headmistress, Lola enters Room Eleven, discards her scripts, and delivers a vulnerable, out-loud apology that saves their bond. Meanwhile, an intriguing development tracks them on the snow slopes. A quiet, long-haired eighth-grader named Matthew (Máté) Tóth approaches Lola by the coat hooks with a message from his mother, an archive official. On their final morning, he hands her a stiff cream bookmark featuring a rare quote by Louisa Ivybridge from 1891. The bookmark had been hidden inside his mother's copy of the very same secret literature book Lola owns. Mrs. Halloway intercepts the news and conducts a secret briefing, revealing that Matthew's mother is a deep-cover Circle ally who is using her son to signal that he is ready to enter their orbit. Although their operational pause is technically active, the quad chooses to complete a small act of kindness: walking through soft forest snow to visit Matthew's lonely, eighty-nine-year-old great-aunt Margit Halmos in her historic cottage. Returning home on the bus, Lola handles a tense phone call with her mother, realizing that her seventh-grade year has permanently accelerated.